For Claudia Andujar, photography is a means of communicating with the world, a medium through which you learn as much as you give. Her work testifies to the photographer's long-standing commitment to the protection of the Yanomami, one of the largest indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon. Since the 1970s, Andujar has lived with this community in the Amazon basin several times. To this day, this region is continuously exploited for its mineral resources.
Claudia Andujar understands photography as an artistic and political tool. Her work is marked by the artist's strong sense of responsibility in the Pro-Yanomami Commission (CCPY) for protected areas along the Brazilian-Venezuelan border.
Claudia Andujar was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1931 and lives and works in São Paulo. After World War II, she emigrated to the United States and in 1955 to Brazil. In the 1970s, Andujar received grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Fundação de Apoio a Pesquisa [FAPESP] to photograph and study Yanomami culture. From 1978 to 2000, she worked for the Pro-Yanomami Commission (CCPY) and coordinated the campaign for the delimitation of the Yanomami Territory in the Amazon (TIY), established by the Brazilian government in 1992.
-Commission Teotônio Vilela, São Paulo. In 2008, she was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture. In 2010 she received the Kassel Photo Book Prize for Marcados, published by Cosac Naify, and in 2018 she was honoured with the Goethe Medal. In 2015, the permanent pavilion Galeria Claudia Andujar was opened at the Instituto Inhotim in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil, with three hundred works created by the artist about the Yanomami.
9 February to 11 August 2024
www.deichtorhallen.de