Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from Barbata’s presentation entitled “Bookmaking in the Amazon of Venezuela: Preserving a Culture,” which she delivered on December 5, 2021 at the 2021 (online) conference of the North American Hand Papermakers.
As a socially engaged artist from Mexico, currently based in New York, I have undertaken sustainable art-centered projects that integrate collaborative and participatory work to address social justice and the environment. One project, which continues to this day, is a papermaking-and-bookmaking project with the Yanomami, Ye’Kuana, and Piaroa indigenous communities in the Amazon of Venezuela.1 This experience has reaffirmed my belief that papermaking and bookmaking are important tools for advocacy, social justice, environmental protection, and self-determination.
My first visit to the Amazon of Venezuela took place in 1992. I arrived in Mahekototeri, located in the high Orinoco territory in the Amazon state, and as I waited in the shade of the forest for the Yanomami community leaders and Mission to approve my entrance into the community, I was greeted by a group of children. I did not know how to speak Yanomami and the children did not speak Spanish, and I thought: no problem! We will communicate in the language of art through drawings. I pulled out of my bag a handmade notebook with handmade paper and lots of different kinds of pencils.
The children were interested in my notebook and I could tell that they had never seen handmade paper, so I tore out pages from my notebook and handed one to each and a pencil. I was the only one who drew on my paper. One of the children held the paper up to the light and smelled it, another inspected it closely and then pointed to a tree at a distance, another made a small hole on one side and threaded it with a thin reed and used it as a type of a kite, another inspected the edges and rolled it up and put it in his loincloth, and another smoothed it out on the ground. As I watched how each one interacted with the paper, I realized that I was in the presence of naturally gifted papermakers! This realization was like a seed that was planted in my heart that began to germinate.
On that same trip, I met the Ortiz family who are members of the Ye’Kuana community. They were teaching the Yanomami people in Mahekototeri how to build canoes. Ye’Kuana means “the people of the canoe” and true to their name, they are extraordinary canoe builders and navigators. I wanted to learn from them how to build a canoe, and asked if they would accept me as an apprentice. Their response made a deep impact in my life and my work as an artist. They asked: if we teach you how to build a canoe, what can you teach us in exchange? I understood immediately the importance of reciprocity, and it became the philosophical foundation of all my work: to respect and value each other’s knowledge through the horizontal exchange of knowledge.
As a Mexican person of mixed heritage born and raised in Mexico, I have always been acutely aware of the narration of our history and the inaccuracy of it because it served the interests of the colonizers. With this caution in mind I proposed to the Ye’Kuana community a bookmaking project that combined environmental protection as well as the preservation of local knowledge. I suggested that the project include the transcription of oral history and be reproduced in handmade books with paper made by hand using local materials. The production of books made in and by the community would have the capacity to counter—or be in dialog with—the numerous publications written about their culture by scholars outside of their community. The Ye’Kuana leaders discussed my proposal and accepted it; it was also embraced by the Yanomami and Piaroa communities. Each took ownership of the project and directed the objectives, goals, and scope of the project. Here, I will focus on the Yanomami Owë Mamotima project.
Throughout the Amazon, indigenous communities have been taught to read and write by the Missions, but not how to make their own books or document their own culture and history. I felt that we could make fine-quality paper and books by adapting local technology—used by the community to process roots and seeds for food—for papermaking, as well as processing local fibers—traditionally harvested by the community to create many of their tools and goods such as arrows and hammocks—into pulp to make paper.
The first step we took was to research the different ways in which the community members process and produce food and goods. Then we made our first sheets of paper, if we can call them that! Without running water, electricity, or equipment for papermaking, our paper looked more like poorly made tortillas, and they were impossible to print or write on. Nevertheless, I was so proud of those first sheets.
We held community meetings and agreed that when I returned to New York I would seek experts to guide us. I took this sample along with all of my notes to Dieu Donné Papermill in New York and met with Mina Takahashi who immediately recognized the potential and challenges of the project. For many years I worked with Takahashi and the staff testing Amazon fibers in Dieu Donné’s controlled studio environment, and returned to the community with the results and recommendations to be implemented in our papermaking workshops on site.
After several years of research, the community and I compiled a fiber log with all of our findings: an extensive record of the use of tropical fibers for hand papermaking in the Amazon of Venezuela. Only three copies of the fiber log are in existence: one was donated to Dieu Donné; another to Instituto de Estudios Avanzados IDEA of Caracas, Venezuela; and the third to the Instituto Nacional de Parques in the Amazon State of Venezuela.
During this time, the Yanomami were building a new shapono, their traditional communal circular dwelling, and the community felt that it was the appropriate subject for their first book. The community promoted their project at neighboring communities, sharing their work, their knowledge, and invited them to adopt the project. During this time, in Mahekototeri, we began testing fibers and converting local technology to create fine-quality paper and notebooks without the use of electricity or materials from outside of the community. Simultaneously we began testing various printmaking techniques on the newly made paper, and created workshops led by the project participants open for the community to participate in, contribute to, or just observe.
A few years later, in 1996, we finished the book Shapono, a handmade book using local fibers and illustrated by women, men, and children of all ages from the community. Shapono recounts the history of how the Yanomami were taught to build their traditional communal home, in the same manner in which they continue to build their home today. The book received the award of best book of the year by the Centro Nacional del Libro in Venezuela. And on the recommendation of Clayton Kirking who was at that time chief librarian of art books at the New York Public Library, we created an edition of 50 numbered and signed copies of the book. Today, the Yanomami Owë Mamotima’s first book Shapono is part of major collections including the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and Princeton University, among others.
The creation of this book, the award the book received, and its placement in major collections around the world have had many empowering effects, and sparked a whole series of decolonizing actions. Most significantly, the leader of the project actively sought to legally change his identity-card name—from Juan Bosco (a name given to him by the Catholic missionaries) to his Yanomami name Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe—as well as the name of his community from Platanal, which roughly means in Spanish a place where banana trees grow, to Mahekototeri.
The process of making books and paper in the Amazon was one of trial and error. And after many trials and many errors—as well as consultations through the years with experts in handmade books and paper such as Mina Takahashi and Paul Wong from Dieu Donné Papermill in New York, Melissa Potter from The Center for Book & Paper at Columbia College Chicago, David Reina in Brooklyn, Mark Lander in New Zealand, and Alvaro Bastidas in Venezuela—the community established self-sustaining, fine-quality papermaking and bookmaking capabilities without creating new dependencies on outside materials or resources. This is not to say that the community shied away from book collaborations with people outside of the community. Given the challenges of preserving documents in the Amazon’s climate, the community recognized that partnering with outsiders helps to safeguard and share the culture and history of the community by placing these valuable cultural testimonies and records in libraries and archives outside of the community.
In 2008, in collaboration with Venezuelan scholars and bookmaker Alvaro Bastidas, we expanded our research of fibers, natural dyes and pigments, and book structures, resulting in the book Iwariwë. Created with the participation of the whole community, the book tells the history of how the Yanomami first obtained fire; as in the first book, Shapono, the Shaman recounted the story, which was then transcribed on paper and illustrated by people of all ages and genders in the community. The design of the book echoes the construction of their traditional circular dwelling, a shapono. Only one copy of Iwariwë was made, and today it is housed at the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados IDEA of Caracas, Venezuela.
In 2010 and 2011 Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe and I were artists in residence at the Center for Book & Paper at Columbia College Chicago (CCC), invited by Melissa Potter (faculty), Stephen Woodall (then director), and Clifton Meador (faculty director of the MFA program). This was the first time Sheroanawe had access to a professional wet studio of this caliber, and assisted by Potter and her master students, he created a series of large pulp paintings.
As a result of this experience, along with guidance from the artist Luis Romero from Venezuela, Sheroanawe’s work was awarded the first prize in the first Indigenous Arts Biennial with works created during his residency at CCC. To date, Sheroanawe’s work has been exhibited widely, received numerous awards, and entered major collections such as Banco Mercantil de Venezuela, La colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, and the British Museum, among others. One of Sheroanawe’s current projects is to install a hand-papermaking studio in Puerto Ayacucho, the state capital of the Amazon state, and we will be reaching out to our original advisors for guidance and recommendations in this new phase of the project. We welcome input from readers of Hand Papermaking.
It is my belief that by recognizing and supporting the reciprocal benefits of these collaborative projects, we further extend our understanding and respect for each other. ¡Gracias!
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NOTES
1.
Editor’s Note: For more on this project, see Stacey Lynch Adnams, “Laura Anderson Barbata and the Yanomami of Venezuela,” Hand Papermaking vol. 19, no. 1 (Summer 2004): 33–38. The article includes a paper sample produced by the Yanomami community.
