Swiss National Commission for UNESCO.
Ranging from brightly coloured feather finery, blowpipes, bows and arrows dipped in curare, to everyday objects, musical instruments or the paraphernalia used by shamans to snuff hallucinogenic substances, some 500 objects, photographs and films are displayed in a 1,000 sq. m. exhibition space. The whole illustrates American Indian cultures as they have been observed from the eighteenth to the twentieth-first century. The culture of certain pre-Columbian societies is represented by refined Marajó pottery and astonishing polished stone pieces.

Amazonian peoples have struggled to resist the destruction of their world, but their population has fallen by about 80% over the last five centuries following the conquest and colonisation of their environment. Brazil, the biggest country in the Amazon basin, has an Indian population of only 700,000, divided into 237 ethnic groups, some numbering only a few hundred people. The MEG’s new exhibition “Amazonia. The Shaman and the Mind of the Forest” is an occasion to draw attention to the plight of the American Indians. 

Thanks to the collaboration of many people fighting for their cause, trying to make Indian cultures better known and working with Indians in the field (NGOs, photographers, filmmakers, musicologists), contemporary testimonies and data complement and illuminate the twentieth-century ethnographic collections and earlier historic collections.
The exhibition is punctuated by portraits of Indian leaders, who are fighting for the rights of indigenous peoples, along with early or contemporary photographs. Photos and videos, recordings and quotations present many different viewpoints. Music once again has a special place in the exhibition with sound installations that plunge visitors into the animist mind of the forest and ritual. 

The key themes of the exhibition are:

Amazonia
The MEG exhibition presents remarkable objects from about thirty ethnic groups from nine countries in the Amazonian basin, including the Kayapó, the Wayana, the Yanomami, the Ka’apór, the Karaja, the Shuar (Jivaro), the Tukuna, and the Bororo. These communities, which are scattered through the biggest forest on the planet (6 million sq. km), may be citizens of Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Suriname, Guiana or French Guiana. 

Animism
“Animism” characterises the thought systems of the American Indians in Amazonia. It is an original ontological approach, that is, a particular way to situate human or non-human beings in the universe and understand why they exist. In animism, human beings, most animals, some plants and the forest itself all have the capacity to think and act. The American Indians also believe that several spatiotemporal worlds coexist: the world of the living, the spirits, the dead, etc.

“Do not think that the forest is dead, put there without reason. If it were inert, we would not move either. The forest animates us. It is alive. We cannot hear it complain, but the forest suffers, just as humans do.” Davi Kopenawa, chief shaman of the Yanomami American Indian community in the Amazonian forest of Brazil (2003).

The forest feels and has its own way of thinking. 

Shamanism
“Shamanism” can be defined as the ability of certain individuals to pass from one world to another in particular circumstances. In the process, the shaman can take on the appearance of another species, and use its powers. Assuming the shape of the urubu bird, for example, he can fly over the forest and spot a stolen soul. Or as a jaguar, he can fight the malevolent being that stole the soul. The mediation practised by shamans is akin to “diplomacy between species”. 

Perspectivism
“Perspectivism” is the anthropological concept used, in an animist context, to assess an individual’s ability and skill to project himself into another’s place and see things from his point of view. He may put himself in the place of a person, an animal (a jaguar just as well as an insect), a spirit or any other thinking being. Like chess players, whether they are hunting, performing shamanic practices or interpreting dreams, the American Indians multiply their viewpoints and imagine how they themselves are perceived.
But appearances can be deceptive, and what is seen or heard may be no more than an illusion. Perspectivism implies taking another viewpoint, with several alternatives. Today a more holistic scientific approach and greater sensitivity to the American Indians’ discourse about their own cultures have led some to talk of “the mind of the forest”. 

Mythology
Mythology is essential for the American Indians. It is a theoretically infinite body of stories passed on by recitation. Mythology takes shape in the oral tradition of societies without writing. Our (Western) understanding of mythology is very limited because we approach it through written transcriptions, which are usually abridged or summarised. All thinking beings appear as characters in the myths. So all the birds and other animals whose feathers or claws or skin are used to make body ornaments are mythological characters. 

Photography and film in the exhibition
Photographs and films have a major place in the exhibition, presenting many different views of the American Indians. Whether they come from the MEG’s collections – historical photos taken by the German photographer George Huebner and the Russian baroness Nadine de Meyendorff or the field work of the ethnologist and militant René Fuerst and the curator Daniel Schoepf – or are the work of contemporary photographers and filmmakers, such as Paul Lambert, or the famous Swiss-born Brazilian photographer, Claudia Andujar, the Genevan photographer, Aurélien Fontanet, or militant filmmaker, Daniel Schweizer, they take visitors deep into the life of the American Indians. 

Cultural and scientific program
The cultural outreach department proposes a full program of workshops, original visits, films, and meetings with people involved in the project. Field research workers give a perspective on the current situation in Amazonia and artists are invited to work on the themes of the exhibition. Many workshops and visits are planned for families and school groups. 

Catalogue
Amazonia. The Shaman and the Mind of the Forest
Boris Wastiau. 2016.
Exhibition catalogue
Paris: Somogy éditions d’art / Geneva: MEG, 208 pages
N° ISBN: 978-2-7572-1117-5
Price: CHF 39 / € 32

CD
A CD presenting the sound stories broadcast in the exhibition will be published in June 2016. 

Exhibition outside the walls
CONTACTS
Colours of Amazonia
28 April - 15 December 2016

In connection with “Amazonia. The Shaman and the Mind of the Forest” at the MEG, a selection of photographs by the MEG’s photographer, Johnathan Watts, will be travelling around Geneva.
The MEG’s photographer, Johnathan Watts, goes so close that the subject is sometimes hard to decipher, but by focusing on detail he takes us deep into nature and reveals the object’s soul. He uses the technique of macro photography and his sharp colourful prints are a reminder of the close bond between the Indians and the Amazonian forest.
The photographer explains that he seeks to “go further than the whole object, to go beyond its function and enter into its very structure”. His photos explore forms and animal and plant materials taken from the luxuriant Amazonian rainforest.
A travelling exhibition is an opportunity to reach people who seldom set foot in a museum. As the photographs focus on objects on display in the exhibition, they invite passers-by to take a poetic look at the MEG’s Amazonian heritage.
Colours of Amazonia
Exhibition of photographs
Vernissage
Thursday 28 April 2016 at 6 pm
Quai Général Guisan, 2-14

The exhibition will be shown successively at several venues in the city of Geneva from 28 April to 15 December 2016: 2-14 Quai Général Guisan (mid April to end May), covered railway in the St Jean quarter (June to mid July), Plaine de Plainpalais (mid July to mid August) Parc des Bastions (mid August to mid September), Mont Blanc pedestrian precinct (mid September to mid October), Promenade Saint Antoine (mid October to end November) and Quai du Rhône (until mid December). 

The MEG (Ethnography Museum of Geneva) is a public institution which was founded by the Genevan anthropologist Eugène Pittard (1867-1962) in 1901. The museum curates objects illustrating human culture throughout history. It has a collection of some 80,000 works and a library with over 50,000 documents on world cultures. The MEG also houses a unique music library, the Archives internationales de musique populaire (AIMP), with over 16,000 hours of folk music recordings; the core of the archives is a collection of over 3,000 hours of historic recordings amassed by Constantin Br?iloiu between 1944 and 1958. Admission to the permanent display of a thousand objects from the five continents is free. The MEG also offers the public a cultural and scientific outreach programme, concerts, film and lecture cycles and stage shows. Since October 2014, the MEG has had a new building in which to display its riches. It was designed by the Zurich firm Graber & Pulver Architekten and stands on the site occupied by the MEG since 1941.

See the Agenda>

MUSÉE D'ETHNOGRAPHIE DE GENÈVE (MEG)
Boulevard Carl-Vogt 65-67
1205 Genève, Switzerland
+41 (0)22-418 45 50
meg-geneve.ch