Ziel Karapotó during the performance Confluences. He wears a mask reminiscent of a fish, a headdress made of blue feathers and a basque skirt. His upper body is painted red, with two black stripes running from his wrists to his hips. He holds a rattle in his hand.
A scene from the performance Confluences. Lilly Baniwa, Ziel Karapotó, and Olinda Tupinambá stand close together, all holding rattles in their hands. They are all wearing striking costumes. One person is dressed as a jaguar, another wears a mask reminiscent of a fish, and another is painted orange all over their body. In the background, the audience sits on the lawn.
Lilly Baniwa during the performance Confluences. Her entire body is painted orange and she wears a headdress that covers her eyes. Her face is expressive, her mouth open as if she were shouting something. She holds rattles in her hands.

Confluences

Lilly Baniwa, Ziel Karapotó, Olinda Tupinambá

Amazonas, Alagoas, Bahia

Bodies as territories, movements as memories, voices as rivers carrying stories: Lilly Baniwa, Ziel Karapotó and Olinda Tupinambá bring their biomes – the Amazon, the Caatinga and the Atlantic Forest – into a dialogue with the territory of Hannover. Their biomes symbolize not only ecological environments, but also the cultural heritage and the embodied knowledge of these regions. In their first collaborative performance, they unfold poetic practices and processes, extending their territories in co-authorship with the lands they traverse – and the human, non-human and more-than-human beings that inhabit them. Rooted in Indigenous cosmologies, their practice embodies memory, ancestry, and resistance. Like rivers flowing into one another to form new currents, Confluences merges the energies of encounter and movement.

 

Lilly Baniwa is an Indigenous actress, performer, artist and researcher from the Amazon region. Her most recent performances include SER-UMA-NÓS (BEING-US-HUMAN) and Antes do tempo existir, which she both developed and performs. Among her newest projects are the video performance manifesto Lithipokoroda and the workshop IPerformatividades Identitárias.

Ziel Karapotó is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and filmmaker. His artistic practice and research is characterized by the exploration of Indigenous poetics, identity configurations and racism against Indigenous communities. In 2024, he was one of three Indigenous artists representing Brazil at the 60th Venice Biennale with the work Cardume II (School of Fish II). His most important audiovisual works include the short film The Word Became Flesh (2019), the documentary Speeches of the Earth (2021) and the short film Paola (2022).

Olinda Tupinambá is a multidisciplinary artist with a degree in Social Communication. She is a cultural worker, performer and filmmaker. Her work is characterized by using her body as a political body - a body that transforms to speak of other possible worlds, to make environmental-political issues visible and to discuss the relationship between humans and nature, which is a recurring theme in some of her works. She has been working in the field of audiovisual media since late 2015, producing and directing ten independent films in the fields of documentary, fiction and performance.

Production credits

With Lilly Baniwa, Ziel Karapotó, Olinda Tupinambá Photos Mehdi Amiri