Author Archives: Barbara Crane Navarro - Rainforest Art Project

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About Barbara Crane Navarro - Rainforest Art Project

I'm a French artist living near Paris. From 1968 to 1973 I studied at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, then at the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California, for my BFA. My work for many decades has been informed and inspired by time spent with indigenous communities. Various study trips devoted to the exploration of techniques and natural pigments took me originally to the Dogon of Mali, West Africa, and subsequently to Yanomami communities in Venezuela and Brazil. Over many years, during the winters, I studied the techniques of traditional Bogolan painting. Hand woven fabric is dyed with boiled bark from the Wolo tree or crushed leaves from other trees, then painted with mud from the Niger river which oxidizes in contact with the dye. Through the Dogon and the Yanomami, my interest in the multiplicity of techniques and supports for aesthetic expression influenced my artistic practice. The voyages to the Amazon Rainforest have informed several series of paintings created while living among the Yanomami. The support used is roughly woven canvas prepared with acrylic medium then textured with a mixture of sand from the river bank and lava. This supple canvas is then rolled and transported on expeditions into the forest. They are then painted using a mixture of acrylic colors and Achiote and Genipap, the vegetal pigments used by the Yanomami for their ritual body paintings and on practical and shamanic implements. My concern for the ongoing devastation of the Amazon Rainforest has inspired my films and installation projects. Since 2005, I've created a perfomance and film project - Fire Sculpture - to bring urgent attention to Rainforest issues. To protest against the continuing destruction, I've publicly set fire to my totemic sculptures. These burning sculptures symbolize the degradation of nature and the annihilation of indigenous cultures that depend on the forest for their survival.

Brasil em chamas: queimadas em novembro quase dobram em relação a 2021!

Dados do Monitor do Fogo do MapBiomas confirmam a escalada da destruição ambiental nos últimos meses do governo Bolsonaro. A área queimada em novembro em todo o território nacional — 775 mil hectares — foi 89% superior ao registrado no … Continue reading

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Pergunta do presente de Natal? – Se garimpeiros estivessem garimpando ouro em seu quintal e contaminando sua única fonte de água com mercúrio, você ainda se decoraria com joias de ouro?

Precisamos repensar nossa relação com todo o mundo vivo e não mais pensar como consumidores em uma economia, mas reconhecer que somos organismos em um ecossistema. Os povos indígenas utilizam a água dos rios e córregos em seus territórios ancestrais … Continue reading

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As Biodiversity Degrades, Nature’s Solutions Are Lost for Ever! — HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch 18 December 2022 (UN News)* — Humanity faces unprecedented engineering challenges if it is to survive. Solutions to these challenges are waiting to be discovered in plants, animals, and microbes, but these could be lost forever, if … Continue reading

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The Guardian revela: garimpeiros construíram”estrada do caos” na terra indígena Yanomami!

A ‘Estrada para o Caos’ atravessa o território Yanomami na Amazônia. Fotografia: Valentina Ricardo / Greenpeace Tom Phillips, sobre o território indígena Yanomami, para o “The Guardian” Fotos aéreas da missão de reconhecimento revelam esforço para contrabandear escavadeiras para o maior … Continue reading

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Question cadeau de Noël ? – Si des prospecteurs cherchaient de l’or dans votre arrière-cour et contaminaient votre seule source d’eau avec du mercure, vous décoreriez-vous toujours avec des bijoux en or ?

Nous devons repenser notre relation avec l’ensemble du monde vivant et ne plus penser comme des consommateurs dans une économie mais reconnaître que nous sommes des organismes dans un écosystème. Les peuples autochtones utilisent l’eau des rivières et des ruisseaux … Continue reading

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Guardianes indígenas: en la primera línea de la protección de la naturaleza.  — Stigmatis — Ned Hamson’s Second Line View of the News

Por Wilmer Lucitante | 16 Dic. 2022 Cada vez que vuelvo a mi comunidad, en el corazón de la Amazonía ecuatoriana, siempre voy en patrulla. Caminar por las exuberantes profundidades del bosque con la luz bailando a través del follaje, … Continue reading

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Why It’s So Hard To Imagine Life After Capitalism — msamba

Get your first month of Audible absolutely free and listen to the audiobook that inspired this episode, Mark Fisher’s “Capitalist Realism.” Visit https://audible.com/secondthought or text secondthought to 500-500 There’s a common expression, “it’s easier to imagine the end of the … Continue reading

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Holiday Gift Question? – If prospectors were digging for gold in your back yard and contaminating your only source of water with mercury, would you still decorate yourself with gold jewelry? 

We need to reconsider our relationship with all of the living world and no longer think like consumers in an economy but recognize that we are organisms in an ecosystem. Indigenous peoples use the water in the rivers and streams … Continue reading

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COP15: negociaciones truncadas para conservar la biodiversidad — EcoPress — MARY CALVO

Desde principios de mes delegados de las 196 naciones del planeta negocian en Montreal -Canadá- para llegar a un acuerdo significativo en busca de frenar la pérdida de biodiversidad y conservar la diversidad biológica. Sin embargo, las negociaciones no avanzan … Continue reading

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Amazônia perdeu 9,7% de sua vegetação natural em 37 anos!

Os dados mais recentes do MapBiomas Amazônia reforçam a necessidade de uma ação internacional integrada para reverter a atual tendência de destruição que, se persistir, levará o bioma além de seu ponto sem retorno até o final desta década Em … Continue reading

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