Claudia Andujar - Still from the film GYURI (Extracts) 2020 by Mariana Lacerda (Director) & Pio Figueiroa (Photography)
CLAUDIA ANDUJAR is a fascinating Swiss born Brazilian Photographer and a Human Rights Beacon of the XX and XXI century. Her life is an inspiration for many artists today and it holds a story that should be told for decades to come.
CLAUDIA ANDUJAR, The Yanomami Struggle, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Despite growing up in a broken home, having lost most of her family and all her childhood friends to the Nazi Holocaust, and having experienced the struggles as a refugee and immigrant at age 13, she held out long enough to find, protect and fight for those who would be her new family for life, The Yanomami.
Claudia Andujar, Davi Kopenawa and other members of The Yanomami community - Still from the film GYURI (Extracts) 2020 by Mariana Lacerda (Director) & Marcelo Lacerda (Photography)
After the horror of World War II, she moves to New York and then to São Paolo, Brazil, where she embarks herself on a career as a photojournalist and where she resides today at the age of 90.
Portrait of Claudia Andujar by Lew Parrella, c. 1961
After her first contact with the Amazonian tribes, she recognises the vulnerability of these communities to the threats of the modern world and starts to aid and defend the Rights of The Yanomami.
But history always repeats itself.
As in colonial times, new conquerors arrived to kill and exploit the land of the infamous legend of “El Dorado”. She witnessed the invasion, deforestation, and pollution of the Yanomami territory as the death of many of them by mercury poisoning and by diseases carried by the new invaders.
Claudia Andujar holding The Guardian "Gold and greed threaten Brazilian tribe'", London 1989, Photo by Robert M. Davis/ Oxfam
Innocence in the face of the old ‘New World’
© Claudia Andujar
During a season of health and vaccination, she creates a collection of portraits that capture the spirit and soul of The Yanomami. They were marked with numbers to be identified and to track the records of the treatments administered; similar to the numbering used on Jews by the Nazis ... 'marked to die'.
© Claudia Andujar
Her images remain as a legacy of beauty expelled from a tragedy that continues to spread its tentacles throughout the region.
© Claudia Andujar
“YANOMAMI” is a term which this tribe uses to call themselves and it means “human beings”. They are perhaps reminiscences of the oldest culture on earth, our beginning, the living possessors of the wisdom we need to save our planet and perpetuate our species before it’s too late; to live in harmony with Mother Nature.
Claudia Andujar - Still from the film GYURI (Extracts) 2020 by Mariana Lacerda (Director) & Marcelo Lacerda (Photography).
"CLAUDIA ANDUJAR, The Yanomami Struggle” (17th June - 19th August 2021), an immaculate exhibition at the Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS with audio visuals taking us through Andujar’s journey from Art to Activism with the Yanomami community from 1971 until today.
CLAUDIA ANDUJAR, The Yanomami Struggle, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Andrés Landino
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Great article. Thank you.
Muy buen trabajo Andrés, como siempre. 😉