Exhibition "Trajetórias Cruzadas"

Trajectories Cruzadas brings together photographs by Claudia Andujar, Lux Vidal and Maureen Bisilliat

For the first time, the exhibition presents the work of three women photographers who are involved in the defense of indigenous peoples and riverside and country communities 

USP's MariAntonia Center opens on October 19th, at 4 pm, the exhibition Crossed Trajectories with works by Claudia Andujar, Lux Vidal and Maureen Bisilliat, with approximately 300 photographs. It is curated by anthropologists Sylvia Caiuby Novaes and Fabiana Bruno. Entry is free.

The exhibition brings together, for the first time, photographs of three European women: Swiss Claudia Andujar, German Lux Vidal and English Maureen Bisilliat. They are women whose careers were marked by the experience of the Second World War, having lived in many countries and mastering several languages. In Brazil, similar trajectories intersect, seeking and revealing a Brazil little known until then by Brazilians.

Curator Sylvia explains that the artists' photography “is a way of getting to know the worlds visited and recorded, worlds very different from those they knew before coming to Brazil”. For her, “it is this perspective and this knowledge that guarantees photography's commitment to defending indigenous peoples, their territories, their culture and ways of living, something that marks their lives to this day. His photographs are a clear demonstration that indigenous people lived in a better world.” 

The exhibition highlights the artists’ peculiar characteristics. Claudia Andujar's photos bring affection, spontaneity, but they also contain something of the unspoken nature, typical of the intimacy shared with the Yanomami indigenous peoples. Lux Vidal's works, in turn, bring a way of looking that approaches, accompanies and describes people over time, in everyday activities, rituals, changes in body painting, use and creation of adornments. And Maureen Bisilliat's portraits emerge from the drama of the character thanks to the black and neutral background used by the photographer.

Promoted with resources from the São Paulo Cultural Action Program (ProAc), the exhibition is the result of research financed by the São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (FAPESP).

THE PHOTOGRAPHERS

Photos by Claudia Andujar, which are part of the Galeria Vermelho collection

Claudia Andujar was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1931. She spent her childhood in Orádea, between Hungary and Romania. Between 1944 and 1945, his father and his paternal family, of Jewish origin, were sent to the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps. In 1946, he lived in New York with his uncle Marcel Haas. She married the Spaniard Julio Andujar and adopted his surname. Between 1949 and 1952, she studied at Hunter College and began painting, inspired by abstract expressionism. He decided to travel to Brazil in 1955, where he became interested in photography. In the 1960s, she worked as a freelance photographer for Brazilian and North American magazines, such as Claudia, Realidade, Life and Look. While working on a special issue of Realidade magazine dedicated to the Amazon, he came into contact with the Yanomami in 1971. With others, he founded the Commission for the Creation of Yanomami Park (CCPY), which fights for the recognition of Yanomami territory. He held several exhibitions about the Yanomami: MASP (1989), Memorial da América Latina (1991), Bienal de Arte de SP (1998), MIS (2000), Pinacoteca (2005), Instituto Moreira Salles (2019) and Fundação Cartier de Paris (2002 and 2020).

Photos by Lux Vidal, which are part of the collection of the Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology at USP (LISA)

Lux Vidal was born in 1930, in Berlin, Germany. He spent most of his childhood and youth in Spain and France, where he studied Classical Literature. In 1951 he obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Sarah Lawrence College, in New York (USA), where he studied Anthropology, Literature and Theater. He arrived in São Paulo in 1955, taught at Aliança Francesa and Liceu Pasteur and, in 1967, returned to study Anthropology at USP, where he completed his master's degree and doctorate. In 1969, she joined the Anthropology Department at USP as a professor and from then on developed research and indigenous actions with several indigenous peoples, especially the Mebengokré-Xikrin, from Pará, and the indigenous peoples from Oiapoque, Amapá. He trained a large number of male and female anthropologists, in addition to contributing to the founding of several indigenous organizations, such as the Pro-Indian Commission of São Paulo. Currently, he continues producing publications and carrying out work related to indigenous peoples.

Photos by Maureen Bisilliat, which are part of the collection of the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS)

Maureen Bisilliat was born in 1931, in Englefield Green, England. Daughter of a Scottish painter and an Argentine diplomat, she lived in different countries as a child due to her father's profession. In 1955, he studied painting with André Lhote and, in 1957, he studied art in New York, at the Arts Students League. Maureen went to live in São Paulo in 1953 with her first husband, Spanish photographer José Antonio Carbonell. After a period abroad, in 1959, he returned to Brazil to stay. He then abandoned painting and began to dedicate himself to photography. Maureen worked at Realidade magazine, from Editora Abril, between the 1960s and 1970s. At the same time, she began editing photobooks, where she drew equivalences between her photographs and excerpts from books by Brazilian authors. In 1973, he made his first trip to Xingu with the Villas-Boas brothers and, in the same year, he opened Galeria O Bode, in São Paulo. In 1988, she was invited by Darcy Ribeiro to create the Pavilion of Creativity, at the Memorial da América Latina. Maureen has published several photobooks, films and held exhibitions at the São Paulo Biennial (1985), FIESP (2009), IMS (2020) and MIS (2022).

THE CURATORS

Sylvia Caiuby Novaes is an anthropologist and senior professor in the Department of Anthropology at USP. At the University, in 1991, she founded the Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology (LISA), of which she was coordinator until 2024. She was Director of the Maria Antonia University Center; is a researcher at the Center for Amerindian Studies (CEstA), coordinator of the Visual Anthropology Group (GRAVI) and editor-in-chief of the anthropology magazine Gesto Imagem e Som (GIS). She is the author of numerous books and photos published in Brazil and abroad, as well as several articles on photography from an anthropological perspective.

Fabiana Bruno has a PhD in Multimedia from Unicamp, and a post-doctorate in Social Anthropology from the same institution and ECA-USP. He is currently carrying out a post-doctorate at the Department of Anthropology at USP, with support from CNPq and under the supervision of Sylvia Caiuby Novaes. At Unicamp, she is deputy coordinator of LA’GRIMA-IFCH and a collaborating researcher in the Department of Anthropology at IFCH. Curator and editor of photobook projects with Fotô Editorial-SP, where she also guides study groups in contemporary photography. She is one of the founders of ACHO–Imagens, in Campinas-SP, a collection that brings together more than 20 thousand photographs collected from urban waste through joint action with recycling collectors.

Service: Crossed Trajectories Exhibition
Location: Centro MariAntonia – Joaquim Nabuco Building
Duration: October 19, 2024 to February 23, 2025
Address: Rua Maria Antônia, nº 258, Vila Buarque, São Paulo (close to Higienópolis and Santa Cecília metro stations)
Visitation: Tuesday to Sunday and holidays, from 10 am to 6 pm 
Free entry
Information: (11) 3123-5202

Press information
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Contacts: (11) 3123-5217 and pressma@usp.br