According to the cosmogony of some peoples of the Alto Rio Negro Indigenous Territory, in Amazonas, Wametisé refers to the creation of the world, where the great serpent that carried humanity in its womb placed each person in his or her territory. Coming out of the snake’s mouth, each person introduced themself and named the place where they would live. Wametisé, or “named places”, refers to the time and territory that the humanities have occupied each place.
When considering the growing presence of people of indigenous or Amazonian origin in the art world, there seems to be a “nomination” or need to go to these places occupied by alternative sentiments and to search for new identities inspired by the thinking of the original peoples. For the Tukans, this is Hóri (the making and thinking of beautiful and sacred images); for the HuniKuin, it is Kené, among other names that help us to think of new vocabularies and symbologies for the world of the arts.
In the same way, from indigenous cosmologies whose universe is rooted in the powerful Amazon basin, we can think of new modes of creation that represent hybrid existences based on the union of human, plant, physical and metaphysical bodies. The works that will be part of this section will present new possibilities of seeing the world inspired by past and present forms of life in the Amazon, where identity is constructed from the connection between beings that propose a collective future with healing narratives that, from critical and profoundly renovating lines, present more plural practices of making art in contemporary times. We present the idea of Wametisé as an exercise in naming these practices to facilitate a creation that enables “Worlds in Transformation”.
