Image, myth, art and contexts

by

Jaider Esbell

This work is a part of the My grandparent Makunaima collection, a proposition for a contextual self-curated exhibition on show in Manaus in 2018, the heart of the Amazon.
The image suggests an aggregation of scattered elements in the appearance of a figurative idea for the fluid myth.
It is fluid because it comes from a state of energy and walks through a time when, in a certain space, men and other beings were also more fluid.
Did they merge together?
Let’s take notes on these issues for the moment.
We speak of a time when everything could be anything.
We speak of a time when things changed in shape under different circumstances.
Makunaima comes from that time.
He comes from a time before that time, actually.
The need of a western concrete and masculine human form can very well be the evident effects of colonization.
At the same time the image suggests integration and harmony, the excess of foundational elements can also suggest a disaggregation, an expansion, a disintegration.

Makunaima in human aspect.
The myth appears to suggest a condition of plenitude.

It is possible to see them as a male, imposing being.
He looks confident in his now existing figure; he has movement and an eye-catching light.

He looks absolute, as if he was the enchantment itself taking form to attend to visualities.
This is an important point to mention.
In terms of indigenous art, not something exterior, European or framed, we artists lack something dynamic (agency?) so the exact condition of transposing worlds is achieved.
We never cease to search for the opposite effect when we simplify the image of the essentially fluid myth to something limited to an image.

The limiting sense of seeing oneself as human, mortal, material.
The materialization of Makunaima in a framable picture can be a way to produce a complicating factor.

This way, who knows, we have the basis or the clues to their devolution to a former state, the state one expects, the full state of art, the state of energy, when the eyes see what is abstract, for that is where all meaning resides.

The exercise of deconstructing the nationalized image of Makunaima demands an extra effort and a lot of skill in the construction of the image of our relation.
I recall that interpretations beyond our reach hover above my grandparent and me.
For many reasons, we shall not feed them because we have a north to guide us.
The works in the collection (15 paintings) will never suffice to contemplate that pictorial universe.
So, without further ado, we invite our reader to walk without reservations around the world of subjectivity and to wait a little longer.
Apparently, Makunaima is something undefined in this picture, although in some of my appearances I have said and written that the image is a part of the art of showing the continuum transitory moment of things.
This poetic journey with my grandparent only has oxygen and soil in this environment.
A considerable amount of imaginative creativity is required.
Just as the image is undone, we expect its decoding effect to decant in our mind and that the other is enchanted in continuity.

It’s not my goal to measure my grandparent’s greatness or their smallness in my lifetime.
It’s not our study-life’s goal to confront the liberated energy from previous exhibitions.
The image above tends to bring the reader to a lesser known side of Makunaima’s activities, their strategic visions.
Were them a visionary?
Should I ask that question in the past tense of the verb to be?
Almost instantly, people who see that image believe it to be the headless mule.
A character of the national folklore, the headless mule is directly connected to Christianity.
They say the headless mule appears when a priest and a woman fornicate in a church.
Not here. There are no mules here. This is a kind of bovine cattle. The same cattle that invade the Amazon forest, destroying everything these days. The same bovine cattle that, before this colonizing wave, didn’t exist around here.
Makunaima, in one of their passages, creates an ox from a white rock in a field.
Makunaima created an ox before this colony was established. What might that mean?

Makunaima is merely an Indian to many, and here they sleep on a hammock in a non-existing place. For others, they are just a literary invention, something not used anymore and therefore unnecessary.
We suppose the words Makunaima or Makunaíma are still entirely new to plenty of people. So, we distribute our efforts on two fronts.
The part that hears or reads about the myth of Makunaima for the first time are the direct objects of our agency.
In choosing these lines of action, another agency is required, contextualization.
Just as some resist the word decolonization, the word Indian appears to be displaced in its use through a consensus between the parts that represent the indigenous movement or movements.
Laziness and the unproductivity attributed to the Indian – or better the indigenous person – has its negative effect reinforced by the ignorance of the bare minimum of the status quo regarding the being born, living and working in the forest.
Do I speak of prejudice, preconceptions?

Makunaima is now a hummingbird, there. That is how they present themselves. At this point exactly, I am filled with great enthusiasm.
The instant readiness of Makunaima in transforming things and transmuting themselves is the most fantastic side of their doings, and thus the least understood.
Transformation, the change of states and, as I said before, gender issues, are also perfectly plausible to find in the meanders of the fluid and unpredictable transit I partially find myself in right now.
In the text, we find a few relevant points that must be treated with greater resources in our conjoined exhibition to come.
The official publication of this essay in a journal as well as the exhibition of Makunaima my grandparent in a colonial showroom in an Amazonian Metropolis are facts.
This text has the same context; occupying diverse spaces with what is new or hasn’t been adequately put to use in the first curious and well-intentioned attempts about my grandparent Makunaima’s unusual universe by previous researchers.

Is there always a party taking place in the indigenous universe?
That is what Makunaima has shown, and therefore they were deemed naturally vulgar, disrespectful, and inconsequential?
Maybe the joy of indigenous people, the idea of happiness that the outside world so desires, is one of the adverse causes for frivolous impositions.
Joy is plenty, the abundant or subtle clothing that makes them unique, could be why they are threatened.
In this legend, I attempt to see Makunaima’s image also in the secular and daily abductions that never seem to yield.
Such questions are due in this context.
Here one can invoke the testimony-fact and give back the exoticism to those who still mix up those of the land.
All references applied in the reading and making of Makunaima to the great public beyond the forest are exotic.
In nearly a century of maximum exposition, what can one still talk about my grandparent?
Everything not yet said, I hold.
It was never said, precisely because there was nothing to say.
Did the people really need a hero?
It was funnier to see make them a villain to sell them for a higher price considering the type’s list of offenses.

Makunaima’s general lines should sometimes unalign Makunaim to compose with many others Makunaimî (as the Makuxi write it).
The substantial details of this agency are in publishing this text as an invitation-provocation as a direct grandchild of the entity.
It would be a risk if we were, in fact, pleading understanding.
It would be risky to endure the misunderstanding of something so intimate and private as family relations are.
But that isn’t all we are talking about.
It isn’t about the search for something comforting and encouraging.
We are also not talking about (in)justice or reparation, seen as in art there is generally no space for rights and wrongs, pretty or aesthetically unqualified.
Let it be known the greatness of our well-being in living such protagonism.
It’s not about some audacious attempt to rewrite history.
It’s not even about anything related to the strategic use of media or scoops of originality.
There’s nothing to do with using and being used.
The meaning is in finding a fertile path so that the dead side of the myth comes to life as something testimonial and not the way it was done before.
We go unaligned step by step until this is shown in its fullness.

There is no logical sequence of events for something as fluid as Makunaima’s existence.
In fact, there’s no way to pin a biography or historiography on them.
In this work, at least two other characters show up that are equivalent to the famous myth.
The perception of characters in art can look like a random composition if there is no context.
In this sense, taking part in this genetic lineage, I expand my exposition to the universe at the same time I seek to position myself externally to this moment.
This is an exercise I am doing.
The crucial moment of the felling of the great Wazak’á tree could say a lot if we allow it to be said.
I recall something I said before about the loose ends of conducting wires, so I don’t actually have to reach any conclusion.
The idea of a monotheist deity is related to the isolation of Makunaima, the character Makunaima, in relation to Anink’ê and Insikiran, their inseparable siblings, in the book cover.
The felling of the great tree is symbolic for reasons not yet shown or seen.
With the gain, that in that decision-act a following act makes us think with great comfort about a projection of life on its own limitations to another dimension.

A child suckling on a bare chest is how Makunaima appears in some scenes. In other moments they appear strong and violent.
All these appearances invite us to think about the extremities of what is impossible, out of any reasonable logic in the normal world.
How can someone or something so strong and powerful like Makunaima let themselves appear so weak and vulnerable as a tiny baby?
These questions seem so nonsense as the claiming of direct relationship I perform and make formally known.
So, there you have it, the most instigating component in Makunaima’s deeds and tasks.
How can it happen that way?
Taking on disparities is not a problem for them.
The problem, if there is any, could be, as I said, in the actual exotic being, the outsider, the western, the uncanny.
As I have mentioned, the composition of this text in a scientific article is a way to attend to specific demands of the contemporary indigenous art based on a greater agency in approaching all the issues directly or indirectly related to Brazil’s contemporary scene.
Does this breakthrough break anything?

Originally published in Iluminuras, Porto Alegre, v. 19, n. 46, p. 11-39, jan/jul, 2018