Right of Reply, Commissioned film for the show: Denilson Baniwa: Under the Skin of History at Art@Bainbridge gallery, Princeton, April-September, 2024
In collaboration with Princeton University’s Brazil LAB and Department of Anthropology, the Princeton University Art Museum presents the work of Denilson Baniwa (Baniwa, born 1984, Amazonas, Brazil). Working in various media including drawing, painting, sculpture, and performance, Baniwa grapples with the legacies of colonialism in the Americas and highlights Indigenous knowledge and resistance. His work addresses themes ranging from early Indigenous encounters with Europeans to ongoing environmental destruction and cultural erasure. Baniwa often draws on historical imagery from European sources in order to critique colonial fantasies while incorporating references to pop culture and technology that reflect contemporary Indigenous experience. The exhibition will include work that Baniwa made in response to objects that he examined in the collections of the Princeton University Art Museum and Princeton University Library Special Collections.
Curated by Jun Nakamura, assistant curator of prints and drawings; Miqueias Mugge, associate research scholar, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies; and Carlos Fausto, professor of anthropology, Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, and Princeton Global Scholar.
Denilson Baniwa: Under the Skin of History is co-organized by the Brazil LAB, the Department of Anthropology, and the Princeton University Art Museum. Co-sponsors of the project include the High Meadows Environmental Institute, University Center for Human Values, the Humanities Council, the Program in Latin American Studies, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. Additional supporters include the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Department of Art & Archaeology, the Lewis Center for the Arts, and the Effron Center for the Study of America.
Fera Utopia #1 - Denilson Baniwa in collaboration with Thiago da Costa Oliveira
In the Fera Utopia series, Baniwa and the photographer Thiago da Costa Oliveira rearrange Playmobil’s safari- and jungle-themed Wiltopia toys to recreate images from sixteenth-century colonial books and material from the Madeira-Mamoré Expeditions Collection at Princeton University. Baniwa’s scenes, which may seem cute or innocent to some, draw explicit parallels between the exoticizing perspectives of earlier colonizers and toys produced today.
