Mixed-Media-Installation, 73 min. Guaraní, Portuguese.
The “Land Without Evil” is the mythology that guides the Guaraní communities. It narrates the search for a lost paradise. From the moment that Europeans crossed the Atlantic, it became the anima of a resistance discourse.
How many different weapons does it take for a fight? The solo exhibition of Patrícia Ferreira Pará Yxapy, one of the most engaged women among Brazil’s Indigenous filmmakers combines new works and the archive behind her audiovisual journey over the past 15 years, always in close collaboration with the Mbyá-Guarani Cinema Collective. It presents Indigenous cinematic practice as a tool of resistance and healing showcasing intimate and painful thoughts on the feminine, on spirituality, colonization, and the relationship to land.
The exhibition is funded by Goethe-Institut Rio de Janeiro and ifa, the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, and is part of “Archive außer sich,” a project of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt as part of “The New Alphabet,” a HKW project supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media due to a ruling of the German Bundestag.
Patrícia Ferreira Pará Yxapy was born in 1985 in Kunha Piru village, Misiones, Argentina-Brazil border. At 13, she crossed the frontier to live in Salto do Jacuí, Brazil. Since 2000 she has been living in Koenju. Encouraged by the workshop of Video nas Aldeias in 2007, she co-founded the Mbyá-Guarani Cinema Collective, dedicated to producing videos and visual art always focused on Guaraní culture. In 2014 and 2015 she worked together with Inuit Indigenous filmmakers for an artistic residency in Canada.
