Same Putumi
Same Putumi is part of the Huni Kuin ethnic group, a Brazilian/Peruvian indigenous group who live in the Amazonian forest. She's an artist, a mother of 6, a shaman and an artisan. In 2018, Same and Vanessa Rosa were introduced through friends in São Paulo, during an event where Same was a guest speaker. Shortly after, Vanessa went to Same's region with the objective of exchanging knowledge and designing projects together. This residency lasted a month, during which the two began an artistic partnership.
What brought them together was their love for patterns. Geometric designs are sacred to the Huni Kuins, and are an essential part of their daily life; they continually paint their faces with such patterns, as well as use them to design their objects, clothes and everything they can. When they take ayahuasca in their rituals they see patterns everywhere. On the other hand, Vanessa was interested in patterns based on her taste for history: she started with Portuguese tiles, but soon afterwards recognised their connection with Islamic art, from there she saw the relationship with Chinese art, and became interested in the sharing of patterns worldwide.
Both Same and Vanessa have sought to combine traditional techniques with new technologies. Same has already made several collaborations with eletronic music artists, singing in her ancestral language while DJs do a live session. Vanessa transforms the patterns into animations or creates laser-cuts stencils with them and use it for paintings. While they were together in Amazonian villages, they used the stencils to do body painting with traditional pigments and stencils, did phtotographic and videomapping experimentations. In February 2019, they produced an installation for the Museum of Image and Sound of São Paulo, with the collaboration of the artist Verônica Natividade.
Each of the images bellow leads to a project developed with Same Putumi
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