Research project
ORIGEM: Queering Indigeneity in Northeastern Brazil
- Start date: 1 March 2019
- End date: Ongoing
- Funder: Internal funders
- Primary investigator: slltp@leeds.ac.uk
- External co-investigators: Dr Paulo Pepe, University of East Anglia
Value
£16.4k
Partners and collaborators
University of East Anglia; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts; Laryssa Machada; Antônio Vital Neto Pankararu
Description
‘ORIGEM’ (2020) was a queer kind of research project from its inception. Its original funding was for research impact, yet no formal research project came before it. Instead, the academics involved used a modest pot of impact funding to support the work of two emerging artists (Laryssa Machada and Antônio Vital Neto Pankararu) with personal contacts in Queer Indigenous circles in Northeastern Brazil who set out to creatively honour and reflect on their relationships within those communities through digital photographic portraits and short video interviews. The UK-based academics remained in the UK throughout the process, leaving the artists free to travel between the communities involved (the Pankararu community at Brejo dos Padres in southern Pernambuco, and the Tupinambá community at Olivença de Ilhéus in Southern Bahia) and explore the topic as they saw fit. Since then, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the results were circulated online via a website and promoted on social media, and, with the post-pandemic return to offline encounters, they were also exhibited at the Bolivia International Digital Art Fair in Cochabamba in September 2022, as part of the Liquid Gender exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art in Norwich from February to August 2024, and in the Pankararu Indigenous territory at Brejo dos Padres, Pernambuco, in May 2025.
Photos (left to right): Bia Pankararu. Photo credit: @Laryssa Machada, 2020. Edmar and Léo(Fykyá). Pankararu. Photo credit. @Laryssa Machada, 2020.
University of Leeds funding came from the Cultural Institute’s Ignite Fund, the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies’ Strategic Research Development Fund, and the GCRF and Newton Consolidation Account. Further funding has come from various sources at the University of East Anglia.
Publications and outputs
‘ORIGEM: Queering Indigeneity through Participatory (Audio)visual Methods in Northeastern Brazil’, New Area Studies, 4:1, 1-30, https://doi.org/10.37975/NAS.60 (co-authors: Laryssa Machada, Antônio Vital Neto Pankararu, Bia Pankararu, Fykyá Pankararu and Paulo Pepe; 2024).
Video of interview with two of the people who were photographed for the project, Fykyá and Bia Pankararu, at Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts - https://sainsburycentre.ac.uk/channel/fykya-and-bia-pankararu-discuss-queer-identities-in-brazil-and-their-role-in-liquid-gender/
‘Originários brasileiros em terras britânicas: uma conversa sobre arte, movimento indígena, gênero e identidade’, interview with Bia and Fykyá Pankararu, Arte e Crítica, 21:70, 48-69, https://abca.art.br/arte-critica-70/ (conducted with Alessandra Simões Paiva and Paulo Pepe, 2024).