Born 1971, Brazil

Yanomami

Badu Gili: Healing Spirit, illuminates the world-famous sails of the Sydney Opera House with a dynamic projection displaying the works of celebrated First Nations artists, the late Bidjigal elder Esme Timbery and two of her children, Marilyn Russell and Steven Russell, and artist Joseca Mokahesi Yanomami of the Yanomami people. Badu Gili: Healing Spirit will appear on the Opera House’s Eastern Bennelong sails five times a night from sunset.

The project marks the second year of a creative partnership between the Biennale of Sydney, the Sydney Opera House and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. The powerful projection of First Nations storytelling has been animated by Vandal with a soundscape by James Henry, bringing together Indigenous artists from Bidjigal (Australia) and Yanomami (the Amazon’s largest Indigenous group) for the first time on Australia’s most iconic canvas.

Transitioning to the forests and rivers of the Yanomami, Joseca Mokahesi Yanomami’s chapter depicts a shamanic curing ceremony, a ritual performed when community members fall ill. Illuminating the relationship between the metaphysical and natural worlds, good spirits are called upon to ward off bad. Offering a glimpse into Yanomami cosmology, Joseca Mokahesi Yanomami brings the Amazon alive with butterflies, jaguars and the songs of his people.

Learn more about Badu Gili: Healing Spirit here

Joseca Mokahesi Yanomami was born in 1971 in the Brazilian Amazon. Son of a shaman, Joseca shares the ancestral knowledge and cosmology of the Yanomami through his drawings – embodying the ancient times and multiple dimensions of the Yanomani land and forest. Shamanic rituals, which communicate between humans and the “xapiri” (spirits), are central themes in his work.

Supported in partnership between the Biennale of Sydney, Sydney Opera House and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.