MURAL
HAWE HENEWAKAME
17.07 - 29.07.2023 - 10 am to 5 pm
Mural production
We warmly invite you to come and see the artists at work throughout the mural production period. The artists and our team will be on site to welcome you and discuss the mural and the issues raised by MAHKU's work.
29.07.2023 - 13:30 pm to 5 pm
Inauguration day
1:30 pm - 2:00 pm: Walk along the banks of the St. Laurent River, led by Inès Benadd from The International Observatory on Nature’s Right
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm: Drawing and singing workshop moderated by artists from the MAHKU collective
4:00 pm: Inauguration of the public mural
Join us to celebrate the inauguration of the Hawe henewakame mural and take part in an art workshop open to all ages!
No reservation necessary.
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This summer, the Huni Kuin artists' collective MAHKU will transform the song Hawe henewakame, meaning The Great River, into a large-scale mural on the walls of the Paul-Émile Sauvageau Pool in Parc L.-O.-Taillon in the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough.
Observing, coming and going, calling out to us, the animals in the song become animated subjects, losing the objectivity we usually accord them. As for the river, it runs and lives in motion, for there are no barriers to prevent it from following its course. Like a circle, past, present and future merge. The time of the song shows that the future is ancestral, for it has always been there, living in the present.
The artists invite us to listen to the words of rivers and snakes, to connect with the various living beings that inhabit both the water bodies of the Amazon and those surrounding Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyaang/Montréal.
In partnership with Milmurs Production and with the support of the City of Montreal and the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec (MCC) as part of the Programme d’art mural (PAM), the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA), the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ), the General Consulate of Brazil in Montreal and the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough.
The project and the accompanying public program is a proposal co-curated by Daniel Dinato and Carla Rangel, and is part of a long-term collaboration between the MAHKU collective, curator Daniel Dinato and the SBC contemporary art gallery. Beginning with the exhibition Vende tela, compra terra (2022), and followed by the public program Assi sheueiau / Mai Kemaname Kani / Echoes of Territories (2023) in collaboration with the Ilnu Museum of Mashteuiatsh.
THE ARTISTS
Painting, the main artistic production of Mahku, was born in 2012 out of the need to revive collective knowledge on the verge of disappearing, and consists of translating Huni meka songs that guide ayahuasca rituals and certain myths into images. Guided by Ibã Huni Kuin, the artists transform and create bridges with the non-Indigenous through murals, drawings and installations while building alliances and strategies of autonomy.
Currently, the works of the collective are part of the collection of the Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP) Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and Fondation Cartier, in Paris. Among the exhibitions in which they participated, there is Histoires de Voir (Fondation Cartier), Les Vivants (Fondation Cartier/Lille 3000), Mestizo Stories (Tomie Ohtake Institute), 35th Panorama of Brazilian Art: Brazil by Multiplication (MAM-SP), Avenida Paulista (MASP), Vaivém (Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil), Vexoá: we know (Pinacoteca) and Moquém_Surarî: contemporary indigenous art (MAM-SP). With a participatory and collaborative approach, MAHKU disseminates the millennia-old knowledge of the Huni Kuin and draws attention to an ongoing history of oppression, exclusion and displacement of the indigenous people.
Artwork: Bane Huni Kuin & Pedro Maná (MAHKU), Hawe Henewakame, public mural, 2023. Photos © Freddy Arciniegas