Joseca Mokahesi Yanomami

Joseca Mokahesi Yanomami’s work focuses on translating Yanomami cosmology into visual narratives. Through drawing and painting, the artist embodies the stories of ancient times and the multiple dimensions of the Yanomami land-forest, visible only to the shamans.

Son of a great shaman, Joseca created ephemeral drawings in the forest from a young age. It was through his relationship with non-indigenous people that he began to use paper, pencils and pens in his production, appropriating these materials and, simultaneously, the Western concept of art. By doing so, the artist develops strategies to communicate with the younger generations of his People and, at the same time, to bring the napë pë (non-indigenous) closer to the Yanomami world.

“I’m a Yanomami, so my mind opened up to drawing in the forest little by little. It wasn’t in the city. Nobody taught me; it was the forest that first taught me how to draw. It was in the middle of the forest, playing, that my mind really opened up to drawing. That’s how I started drawing and that’s why I continue to this day,” the artist says. “I don’t draw without reason; I’m inspired by the words of the shamans. Those with the most beautiful chants, those who really know how to make the words of the xapiri pë spirits heard. When they hold their shamanic sessions, I listen to their chants, record all the words in my mind and then turn them into drawings. I then draw everything that the shamans describe: the spirits, their ornaments, their paths, the places where they come down, and so I draw the words of the spirits that I hear in our house.”

In the 1990s, Joseca founded the first Yanomami school in his community, encouraging youths and children to become literate in the Yanomae language. During this period, he participated in the development of several bilingual booklets (Yanomae/Portuguese) for school education and health programs.

Deeply rooted in the cosmology of his People, Joseca’s work occupies a new position in the history of the Yanomami struggle to defend their rights and territory through art. An initiative started in the 1970s by photographer Claudia Andujar with a group of Yanomami shamans and which is currently supported by the Hutukara Associação Yanomami, founded by Davi Kopenawa in 2004.

Following an invitation from Bruce Albert, anthropologist and long-standing friend of his, in 2003 Joseca took part in his first exhibition, L’Esprit de la Forêt, at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, France, and began to participate in exhibitions in Brazil and internationally. In 2022, Joseca Mokahesi holds his first solo show, Kami Yamakɨ Urihipë [Our Forest-Land], at the MASP in São Paulo, Brazil. In 2024, his work is featured at the 60th Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere, Italy. Other noteworthy group exhibitions are Siamo Foresta, Triennale Milano, Milan, Italy, 2023; Indigenous Histories, MASP, São Paulo, Brazil, 2023; Les Vivants, Le Tripostal, Lille, France, 2022; Moquém_Surarî: arte indígena contemporânea, MAM, São Paulo, Brazil, 2021; and Trees, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China, 2021. Joseca’s work is in the collections of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France and of the MASP, in São Paulo, Brazil.

Joseca Mokahesi’s representation is a collaboration between Millan and Hutukara Associação Yanomami.