MAHKU: Visions / Mirações exhibition catalog
Published to accompany the 2023 exhibition at MASP (São Paulo Museum of Art), this book is the first monograph on the Huni Kuin Artists’ Movement (MAHKU). Founded in 2013, the group began its work by translating traditional songs of the Huni Kuin people into figurative drawings, developed in Indigenous teaching degree courses at the Federal University of Acre (UFAC). The group’s paintings derive both from these translations and recordings of songs, myths, and ancestral stories, as well as from the visual experiences generated by the nixi pae rituals—which involve the ingestion of ayahuasca and are referred to as mirações (“visions”), the title of the project.
The bilingual book (Portuguese/English) also features transcriptions of Huni Kuin songs and myths, along with essays on the history and meaning of the collective’s practices and representations, complemented by reproductions of much of their visual production.
Graphic motifs inspired by the skin of the boa constrictor—a central theme in the group’s songs, paintings, and drawings—run throughout many of the works and were adapted into a geometric pattern framing every page of the book. The title on the cover is printed in glossy screen printing, using the geometric typeface Tokyto. This font’s design, also used for the artwork titles and section openings, is composed exclusively of diagonals and steps, without curves, referencing the graphic motifs presented throughout the catalog.
