Fernanda Liberti tells the story of the Tupinambá cape in this stunning series from Brazil
In her major body of work Dancing with the Tupinambá, artist Fernanda Liberti has immersed herself in the traditions of Brazil’s Tupinambá people as expressed through a sacred feathered cape. The short film and photo series features Liberti’s collaborator, indigenous artist, curator and leader Glicéria Tupinambá, as she wears this special garment to journey gracefully through Serra do Padeiro in south Bahia, immersing the viewer in the beauty of the environment and the ancestral value of the cape.
Garments such as these have been in existence since at least the 15th century but due to the rift of colonialism, the Tupinambá – once the largest ethnic group – were decimated and those that remained were forced to lose their culture. For three centuries, only 11 capes remained, all held in European museums and collections. After one cape travelled from Denmark to Brazil for an exhibition, it ignited protest within the Tupinambá community, who for some years have been fighting to reclaim their identity, rights and lands. And by 2020, Glicéria had undertaken enough research to authentically create a new cape, which was constructed from over 4,000 sustainably sourced bird feathers and went through the hands of many to make.
“In June 2021, I travelled to Serra do Padeiro to meet Glicéria, photograph her process of manufacturing the capes and to further understand what this return means to her community. The images are a result from this encounter and collaboration,” Liberti explains. One image in particular, Thousand In One, sums up the spirit of the project for the artist. It pictures Glicéria sitting in front of her family’s altar, made up of a mass of paintings, sculptures and totems spanning Catholic saints, African Orixás and indigenous deities. “The image represents the complexity of our times: Glicéria, wearing her outfit – within which tradition meets innovation, the present meets the past – is posing on her knees in the epicentre of the Brasilian religious syncretism. We can see a thousand years in a day, showcasing the diversity of cultures that makes Brazil, Brasil.”
Liberti grew up in Rio de Janeiro, where she began photography aged 15, and was drawn to the dichotomy of the city where the ocean and rain forest are intertwined with the urban sprawl. She relocated to London to study photography, first at the London College of Communication and then at the Royal College of Art, graduating from the MA this year with the Tupinambá series. She was also recently selected for The Art of Color Dior exhibition Les Recontres d'Arles. A solo show of Dancing with the Tupinambá has just closed at Sheriff Gallery, Paris, and it now moves onto Rio’s Galeria Refresco in November.
Going forward her work will continue to explore “our relationship to the ever-shifting environments in which we live” while championing racial, gender and sexual equality. “The Tupinambá cape is the proof of the systems that connect us in the universe. It is magnificent, and this experience was beyond anything I could ever have imagined.”