Chants of Images is the first show solely dedicated to the production of the MAHKU (Huni Kuin Artists Movement) collective in national territory. The exhibition is the result of a collaborative project started over a year ago, which counted with the production of Carmo Johnson Projects, the hosting of Cláudio Cretti, artistic director of Casa de Cultura do Parque, and the supervision of curators Daniel Dinato and Ibã Huni Kuin, the catalyst of the collective. One of the goals of this collaborative project was to stimulate the "professionalization" of the collective, aiming at its more effective insertion in the art market. As Ibã argues: sell canvas, buy land, boat, gasoline, brush cutters, etc., and thus strengthen the livelihoods of the collective members and their families. For MAHKU, artistic and intellectual work is in complete harmony with manual labor, both sustaining the collective life in the villages. The paintbrush is our machete, the artists say.

The constant search for autonomy in relations with non-indigenous people is one of the main axes of the collective's actions. Resisters of the violent rubber cycle, the members of the collective yearn for the just purpose of "never having a boss again. The sale of works, in this sense, can be understood as one more of the century-old resistance strategies of the Huni Kuin, who, like many other Amazonian indigenous peoples, appropriate alien techniques to strengthen themselves. In 2014, with the amount received from the sale of a canvas, they bought about ten hectares of land, where they are developing the MAHKU Independent Center, a place for research, for preservation of the forest and for Huni Kuin knowledge.

MAHKU is a collective of Huni Kuin artists and researchers, an indigenous people of about 14,000 people who live in the state of Acre and in Peru. The group is currently composed of Ibã Huni Kuin, Kássia Borges, Pedro Maná, Cleiber Bane and Acelino Tuin. Founded in 2013, in the municipality of Jordão, in the state of Acre, the collective is an outcome of the research of its founder, Ibã Huni Kuin, on the huni meka chants (the chants that conduct the rituals with ayahuasca among the Huni Kuin). His investigation of the chants resulted in the 2006 book "Nixi pae, the spirit of the forest". Three years later, in 2009, his son Bane started drawing these chants. According to him, it was easier to memorize the letters and understand the chants by transforming them into a picture. Bane thus created a learning method for the Huni Meka that was later collectivized and transformed into MAHKU. Today, by painting, the artists continue the collective learning of the chants, besides establishing a more symmetrical dialogue with the non-indigenous universe, especially with the contemporary art circuit.

The figurative images such as we see here, called dami by the Huni Kuin, are "the paths (bai) opened by the nixi pae capable of placing the singer in relation to the yuxin ("spirits") present there, or to the 'people of the nixi pae', those who really understand the special words of the song composed in the language of the ancients (shenipabu hãtxa)". One can see that there is a constituent non-understanding here. There is, one could say, an excess of meaning that the artists must deal with, and they do so by "putting the chants into meaning," as Ibã puts it, through painting. There is no way to explain the chants, the artists often repeat, it is better to see. With paintings, the artists give us a partial and self-controlled access to this knowledge.

In the exhibition Chants of Images, we seek to highlight the personal quality of artistic manifestation, presenting different versions of the chants and mirações. Although the mythical and ritual background of the works is collective, each artist transforms the huni meka chant in a specific way, and thus the collective also maintains a certain autonomy and internal independence. As the members of MAHKU usually say, even if the same chant is painted a thousand times, it will never be the same. Always diverse, always unique.

Finally, we can hear the chants Yube Nawa Ainbu, Nai Mapu Yubekã and Txain Punke Ruaken in Ibã's voice and see the boa Yube Shanu, owner of the ayahuasca knowledge among the Huni Kuin, which is present through Kássia Borges' monumental sculpture. May we look calmly and attentively at this universe, contemporary to ours, to which the artists kindly give us access.