T+L Reports: Amazon Visions

Call it artistic anthropology: "Yanomami," now at Paris's Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain (through October 12), displays the work of 10 artists responding to the experiences of a hunter-gatherer tribe in the Amazon rain forest. Outsiders did not discover the Yanomami—whose lands span Brazil and Venezuela—until the 1940's; in the eighties, gold hunters moved into their territory, bringing conflict and disease. Tony Oursler's installation uses video from shamanistic sessions in the village of Watoriki; Internet art pioneer Wolfgang Staehle sets up an epic three-part projection of rain-forest scenery; Brazilian Adriana Varejão's monumental painting depicts dislocated bodies and draws on Yanomami myths. In an effort to give something back to a beleaguered people, the Fondation Cartier has also helped fund a pair of programs: one will teach Portuguese to teens; the other will create the first map of Yanomami lands.
—Julie Caniglia