Indigenous Stools of Brazil

The BEĨ Collection was born from an aesthetic fascination, in a casual contact with the pieces. The interest, at that point, was the stools themselves, the unmistakable beauty of their shapes, colors, graphics and textures. Functionality combined with elegance revealed a clear proximity of the stools to contemporary design, at the same time that they carried the history and culture of the people who made them. The immersion in this universe showed us how much the artistic manifestations of urban and modern Brazil owe to the art of the native peoples. It became clear that the collection was not a grouping of exotic objects, but a collection of works that were related to Brazilian identity.

The publication of the book “Indigenous Stools of Brazil”, in 2015, marks a turning point in the BEĨ Collection. The long editing process that preceded the release was also a period of conceptual transformation. If the initial objective of the book was to document the collection, the complexity of the pieces ended up imposing a series of questions that were difficult to answer, for the stools blur the boundaries between art and artifact, the sacred object and the commodity, tradition and experimentation. Although they carry symbolic and ritual weight, they also respond to the demand of buyers and collectors. They are models made with ancient techniques, passed down from generation to generation, but they are also unique works, in which it is possible to recognize not only the culture they come from, but also the unique style of the one who carved them – the author's mark, which is not to be confused with the group. By publishing the name of these creators – which, in some cases, required months of research – the book recognized and legitimized them as artists.

Since the book's release, the stools have gained increasing visibility outside the villages and the universe of anthropological research. Pieces from the collection were exhibited in different exhibitions, inside and outside Brazil, with the presence of indigenous artists.

This movement of exposure to the outside world revealed, in a more open way, the modus vivendi of those who manufactured the stools. As indigenous artists conquered a voice and space in this new context, the potency and vulnerability of their culture of origin became wide open.

Thus, in a third moment, the BEĨ Collection once again turned the attention to the collectivity: it was no longer about thinking of stools as artifacts created by homogeneous indigenous ethnicities, but to understand that each artist, in their uniqueness, is a member of a community historically marked by exclusion, violence and an isolation that has become even more dramatic with the covid-19 pandemic.

The preservation of traditional and primeval production patterns reveals the extreme aesthetic sophistication of the civilizations that flourished in pre-colonial Brazil. In this way, from this single object, the stool, it is possible to reconstruct all the variety, diversity and refinement of Brazilian ancestral cultures, which remain alive despite the repeated aggressions to which they have been subjected.

The dynamics of the BEĨ Collection work in a two-way relationship: on one hand, buying, preserving, cataloging and exhibiting the stools results in learning in several spheres – cultural, artistic, environmental, personal; on the other hand, this movement offers an opportunity for indigenous communities to conquer space, recognition and autonomy.

This exhibition is yet another step on this path of maturity, not only for the collection itself, but also above all for the collection's relationship with indigenous villages. It is the result of a trajectory that goes from the initial enchantment by traditional art to a deeper understanding of its meanings, in addition to the awareness that these peoples must be seen and heard, understood in their singularities and respected in their decisions.

An exhibition at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, a great master of Brazilian architecture, is symbolic for the dimension of the space offered to the collection, but mainly because the architect has always had a close relationship with the aesthetics of the indigenous peoples of Brazil. According to Ciro Pirondi, president of the Oscar Niemeyer Foundation, “the design as an expression of a freedom present in the material culture of Brazilian indigenous people composes the memory of Oscar Niemeyer's domes or hollows. The wooden frames present in the structure of indigenous collective housing are replaced by steel and cement in the domes of the Brazilian Plateau, Ibirapuera and the ‘Eye’ of the Niemeyer Museum”.

We would like to express our gratitude to Kátia d’Avillez, who conceived the exhibition and since the beginning of the BEĨ Collection has worked for the promotion of indigenous design; to Marcelo Conrado, for his partnership in the reflections on indigenous art, and to the president of the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Juliana Vellozo Almeida Vosnika, and her team, who welcomed the exhibition generously and wisely, placing it alongside the collections of African and Asian art, creating a panorama of the matrices of Brazilian aesthetic language in one of the most important cultural institutions in the country.

Marisa Moreira Salles and Tomas Alvim