The paths of Bruno Novelli and the Huni Kuin’s Artists Movement (MAHKU) crossed definitively in 2017. In that year, we organized the painting of the Secretariat of Education and Culture of the municipality of Jordão, in the state of Acre (Brazil). We were together for about a month painting, talking and, above all, learning. We realized the power of the collective and the importance of Ibã's work in weaving and building the MAHKU.
MAHKU paints chants (called huni meka in the Huni kuin language), translates them, puts them « in the meaning” , as Ibã says. These chants are paths and assist in conducting the ritual with ayahuasca. They place the participants in rituals with nixi pae (ayahuasca) in relation to not directly visible beings. MAHKU, therefore, paints a relationship technology. The paintings, in turn, operate as paths through the non-indigenous world. Several things and people pass through this two-way bridge. Sometimes alliances are created. It is the case that gives rise to this project. Since 2017, we have decided to contribute, each in its own way, to the collective autonomy process. As Ibã says and defends: “Sell painting, buy land”. With the sale of a painting in 2014, Ibã and MAHKU bought a land in the Amazon forest, still totally preserved, on the bank of the Tarauacá River, near the municipality of Jordão, Acre. This autonomous movement to buy land operates by expanding the imaginary that is usually held about indigenous populations: that of those who live under tutelage and in a kind of perpetual present located in the past. In the future, the collective's objective for this location is the construction of the MAHKU Independent Center, a place for artistic exchange and “spiritual research”, as Ibã says. With the sale of these works, they will seek to continue this project.
I say that each one contributes in his own way because Bruno is an artist. I am not. Bruno paints and his interests, the visual pluriversity that travels through his mind and body brings together elements as diverse as São Paulo and Jordão. Forest and megalopolis. Medieval art and indigenous graphics. Pixo and Renaissance art. Ibã Huni Kuin and RammEllzee. Sigmar Polke and Mestre Guarany. Alchemy, ayahuasca. Connection.
Bruno's precision, combined with a multiplicity of references, creates a kind of painted collage. Real and unreal animals, archetypes and myths, plants and stones, sunsets and eclipses, iconic figures and surreal landscapes. "Everything is dangerous, everything is divine, wonderful". The overlapping layers of paints and the gesture marks, however, show that it is human work. Bruno's real is made up of colors and images that, taken together, go beyond physical limits and become metaphysics: an individual metaphysics. Is that even possible?
Now, the paths of Bruno Novelli and MAHKU converge again. Not in the Amazon Forest anymore, but in São Paulo. Presented by Carmo Johnson Projects, Bruno Novelli and the collective MAHKU show new works for the SP- Arte Viewing Room and, simultaneously, in the face-to-face exhibition, curated by Daniel Dinato, “Everything is dangerous. Everything is divine, wonderful”, to be hosted at the brutalist house designed by Joaquim Guedes in Pacaembu.
— Daniel Dinato
