Paper short abstract:

This article seeks to understand the transformations of the notion of image among the Yanomami of Brazilian Amazon. In order to achieve this objective, I present yanomami practices of imagery production by approaching the transition from traditional recourse to images to their contemporary usages.

Paper long abstract:

The main goal of this work is to understand the processes involving the appropriation of non-traditional images by the Yanomami. Considering this, I determine a relational network between shamanic images and paper drawings that I obtained from fieldwork with the Yanomami. In addition, I examine here the origins of the most ordinary visual figures within the Yanomami communities. In this article, I explore the transformation of image production in a society that traditionally ignores the visual arts as a form of registration; a society that maintains ritual practices in order to eliminate artifacts linked to personal memory but that now accepts and produces drawings of their social practices, environment, rituals and myths, previously considered as invisible images. The analysis is established in the confrontation between yanomami people and its dynamics of contact with a western figurative society, which roots its history in physical documentation and visual images. I intend to understand the different forms of graphic, ritual and verbal expression of the Yanomami in order to relate them to the indigenous aesthetics by means of concepts such as creativity, production and reproduction.