Das estearias à cerâmica Yudjá: poéticas e memória

Abstract

This research proposes an interdisciplinary investigation into Indigenous ceramics, with a focus on the production of the Yudjá people, located in the Pakayá village within the Xingu Indigenous Park (MT), in dialogue with the ceramic legacy of the Maranhão's pile dwellings. Drawing from anthropology, archaeology, and visual arts, the study seeks to understand how ceramics function as an aesthetic, technical, and symbolic language: expressing memory, identity, and resistance among Indigenous peoples. The analysis takes contemporary exhibition such as Véxoa: We Know (2020) as reference, questioning the displacement of ceramic artifacts from their territories of origin to the exhibition space, and the symbolic and political implications of this movement. The research also engages with photographic records by Larissa Menéndez from 2014, originally published on the now-unavailable Visual Virtual MT website, highlighting the urgency of preserving and critically analyzing this archive. Grounded in the theoretical perspectives of authors such as Berta Ribeiro, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Walter Mignolo, the study explores the processes and poetics embedded in Yudjá ceramic practices, understanding ceramics as a form of collective and memory-based production. By addressing ceramics as a living cultural artifact that moves between ritual, daily life, and the museum, this dissertation aims to contribute to the discourse on the modes of existence and representation of Indigenous cultures in contemporary Brazil, advocating for the recognition of their knowledge systems and aesthetics as legitimate forms of knowledge production and artistic expression. Keywords: