The artist Lucilene Wapichana was forced to leave her village as a child in 1968, at the age of 10, because she was given by her parents to a family from Boa Vista. From Roraima, she went to Manaus, and from there she settled in Curitiba, where her son Gustavo was born. “As a young man, Uncle Casimiro was told that his Wapichana language was ugly. ‘Language of the woods’. ‘Caboclo language’”, wrote Gustavo Caboco in his book Baraz Kawau:⁵⁹ “I have found in drawing, in text, in listening, in embroidery, in sound, ways to dialogue with indigenous current events and my identity.”

Gustavo Caboco’s art is among the most unique indigenous art projects of the 21st century. Caboco stands alongside two projects developed in the Amazon. The first is an action with painting and drawing about the ancestry, narratives, memory, knowledge, and education of the Huni Kuin people under the leadership of the shamans Agostinho Manduca Mateus Ïka Muru and Dua Busē (see pages 222-229). The second is polysemic Denilson Baniwa’s complex political art on burning contemporary issues related to indigenous power, domination, and emancipation (see pages 260-263). The third is Ailton Krenak. The fourth is the Guarani Xadalu Tupã Jekupé in Porto Alegre. Although there are other indigenous artists who are equally significant, these are the ones we have included in this comparison. These five examples lead us to the questions: what or who is an indigenous artist? What makes an indigenous person or an artist an indigenous artist?

Gustavo Caboco did not summarize his art to painting in a contaminated and oscillating context between indigenous art and western art, or to the creation of an emblematic writing style that guarantee him a signature work in the context of styling and commodification of the said contemporary indigenous art. His narratives expand the symbolic status of the spiritual values and the history on which he works. He presents himself as a visual artist and graphic designer, a combination that founds his own, unmistakable language.

“What should be recognized in Gustavo Caboco’s art is the symbolic effectiveness of his images and his transit through the phantasmal time of survivals”, in terms of Georges Didi-Huberman’s interpretation of the concepts of Nachleben and Pathosformel developed by art historian Aby Warburg.⁶⁰ Of less interest here is Warburg’s exact relationship to anthropology and far more Gustavo Caboco’s operations with history and images, and especially how he weaves anthropology, history, imagery, and autobiography into his narratives.

An example is his artist book Baaraz Kawau,⁶¹ a graphic jewel in vermilion, like the title color of the first edition of Macunaíma (1928) by Mario de Andrade. In several pages of Baaraz Kawau, Gustavo Caboco intermingles words and drawings to interweave emotions, the Wapichana as an object of anthropological knowledge in the National Museum, his family, the quasicoincidence of dates, the fire, and the losses in this institution:

“I was shocked to see a Wapichana mace, in July 2018, at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro”.

“There was literally a short circuit when I saw the object, because the age of the mace reminded me of my uncle Casimiro Cadete, whose name is Cassun: the electric fish. Our uncle Casimiro was born in 1921, in Roraima. There at the Museum, in Rio, the date of the mace was 1924.”

“The electric shock I had at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro was seeing a piece with the age very close to this relative. A few months later the museum turned into ashes. I thought of the burning Wapichana mace.”

“I am very sorry for this historic loss. It is the burning of the first scientific institution in the country, the largest anthropology library in Latin America, the first postgraduate program in anthropology, the Wapichana mace, as well as so many other important pieces for world history and indigenous history.”

Finally, Baaraz Kawau offers a word of hope for the possible reconstruction of the National Museum, in which he wants to participate:

“Repatriation is gray. Cassun, Casimiro, died at the age of 93. The mace, aged 94, in the fire in September 2018./I mention here the Wapichana words ‘Baaraz Kawau’, which sign the name of this publication and mean ‘the field after the fire’./The burnt field opens the door to a new field, full of green, of hunting and opportunity.”