Ernesto Neto and the Huni Kuin

Since the mid-1990s Ernesto Neto (b. 1964) has produced an influential body of work that explores constructions of social space and the natural world by inviting physical interaction and sensory experience. Drawing on biomorphism and minimalist sculpture, along with neoconcretism and other Brazilian vanguard movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the artist both references and incorporates organic shapes and materi-als—spices, sand, and shells among them—that engage all five senses, producing a new type of sensory perception that renegotiates boundaries between the artwork and the viewer, the organic and the man-made, as well as between the natural, spiritual, and social worlds. The journey that Neto, the Huni Kuin, and TBA21 have embarked on marks a crucial extension of the concerns that have been evident in Neto’s oeuvre over the past 20 years: a celebration of the sensuality of being, the unity of bodies and nature, and a longing for spiritual vision.

In collaboration with the members of the Huni Kuin, who will reside in Vienna for the preparation and initiation of the exhibition and enter into dialogue with Neto’s artistic language through a diversity of knowledge, expressions, and experiences, the artist mobilizes a deep understanding of indigenous wisdom and tradition and the relational and perspectival nature of the Huni Kuin’s world vision. Next to a central kupixawa – an ova or rituals tent – ceremonial and „magic“ objects will be presented in a display fabricated from Lycra and spiced with pepper and lavender and will both contextualize and seek to reverse the encyclopedic (re)presentation of indigenous artifacts and the objectification of knowledge in traditional museum settings. Neto’s new commission, combined with earlier major works by the artist from TBA21’s collection, demonstrate his long-standing dedication to divine forms and engage with an understanding of the body as part of the spiritual and material universe.

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