MAHKU (Movimento dos Artistas Huni Kuin, or Huni Kuin Artists Movement), founded in 2013, is a collective of artists based between the city of Jordão and the Chico Curumim village, in the Kaxinawá (Huni Kuin) Indigenous Land of the Jordão River, state of Acre. Currently, MAHKU is one of the main players in the Brazilian contemporary art scene in general and Indigenous art in particular.
It began in the late 2000s, when some leaders of the Huni Kuin people, especially Ibã and three of his sons, Acelino, Bane, and Maná, started to carry out workshops to record the Huni Kuin chants, myths, and practices in drawings. Many of MAHKU’s works are visual depictions of the huni meka chants, traditional knowledge that accompanies the nixi pae rituals with the ayahuasca drink — a kind of tea with hallucinogenic potential prepared with Amazonian plants and used for centuries by several peoples in South America.
The visual experiences caused by the drink—called mirações (visions), this exhibition’s title — are the main raw material for the work of MAKHU’s members. The paintings and drawings also depict mythical narratives and ancestral stories about the emergence of the world and the division of species — essential elements to the Huni Kuin people’s life, the production of their humanity, and their relationship with other animals, plants, and their spirits.
Public Collections
Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil – Brasilia (CCBB), Museu de Arte Moderna – São Paulo (MAM), Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and Fondation Cartier -Paris.