A new exhibition in Bonn rejects the long‑standing European image of the Amazon as an untouched, timeless wilderness and instead presents it as a dynamic cultural region shaped by people, histories and ongoing relationships. Co‑curated by anthropologist Leandro Varison and Brazilian Indigenous artist‑activist Denilson Baniwa, “Amazonia. Indigenous Worlds” assembles objects, artworks and installations to reflect Indigenous frameworks for history, social life and the more‑than‑human world rather than a conventional museum chronology.
The show treats Amazonia not as a passive backdrop but as a populated, cultivated and culturally diverse landscape. The curators describe the region in broad terms across national borders — Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana — roughly following the Amazon Basin. It was once home to perhaps several million people; researchers now see evidence of forest gardens, deliberate soil enrichment known as terra preta, and long‑term cultivation of species such as Brazil nut, cacao and açaí. These findings dispute the myth of pristine wilderness and reveal centuries of landscape management and food production.
Linguistic variety is another focus: scholars estimate more than 1,000 languages were spoken in the basin before European contact, and more than 300 Indigenous languages remain in use today, alongside gestures, whistled and drummed forms of communication. Rather than isolating objects in a Western narrative of discovery, the exhibition groups material and multimedia pieces to convey Indigenous concepts of time, memory and responsibility — histories that are continuous with present practices.
Several works explicitly confront colonial misrepresentation. Jaider Esbell’s Carta ao Velho Mundo (2018–2019) repurposes pages from a 1972 encyclopedia that once claimed Western art’s universality, painting and writing Indigenous cosmologies and urgent environmental messages over those reproductions. Denilson Baniwa’s Cacadores de Ficcoes Coloniais (2021) takes early anthropological photographs that once exoticized or classified Amazonian peoples and inserts familiar pop‑culture figures — a DeLorean, King Kong, Godzilla — to question how such images shaped persistent stereotypes.
Varison and Baniwa emphasize that Indigenous cultures are alive and adaptable. The exhibition rejects the idea that contemporary technologies or new practices signify cultural loss; instead, they frame these as choices and continuities made on Indigenous terms. They also stress that some communities choose deliberate isolation today, and that such decisions are modern choices, not evidence of being ‘‘people of the past.’’
A recurring theme is the porous boundary between humans and other beings: ancestors, spirits and non‑human entities are woven into social life, shaping obligations and memory. The show even reframes the notion of the ‘‘Other,’’ suggesting that difference is often a matter of worldview rather than simply skin color.
By centering Indigenous voices, knowledge and aesthetics, “Amazonia. Indigenous Worlds” reframes the basin as a living archive of cultural resilience, exchange and stewardship. The exhibition runs through August 9, 2026.