CLAUDIA ANDUJAR – THE END OF THE WORLD

In the organizer's words:

For Claudia Andujar, photography is a means of communicating with the world, a medium through which one learns as much as one gives. Her work is a testament to the photographer's longstanding commitment to the protection of the Yanomami, one of the largest indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon. Andujar has lived with this community in the Amazon basin several times since the 1970s. To this day, this region is continuously exploited for its mineral resources.

Claudia Andujar sees photography as an artistic and political tool. Her work is characterized by the strong sense of responsibility with which the artist advocates for protected areas along the Brazilian-Venezuelan border in the Pro-Yanomami Commission (CCPY).

Claudia Andujar was born in 1931 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and lives and works in São Paulo. She emigrated to the United States after World War II and to Brazil in 1955. In the 1970s, Andujar received grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Fundação de Apoio a Pesquisa [FAPESP] to photograph and study Yanomami culture. From 1978 to 2000, she worked for the Pro-Yanomami Commission (CCPY), coordinating the campaign for the demarcation of the Yanomami Territory in the Amazon (TIY), established by the Brazilian government in 1992. In recognition of her work as a human rights advocate, Andujar received the Annual Cultural Freedom Award from the Lannan Foundation, New Mexico, in 2000. In 2003, she received the Severo Gomes Award from the Teotônio Vilela Human Rights Commission, São Paulo. In 2008, she was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture. In 2010 she received the Kassel Photo Book Prize for Marcados, published by Cosac Naify, and in 2018 she was honored with the Goethe Medal. In 2015, the permanent pavilion Galeria Claudia Andujar opened at the Instituto Inhotim in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil, with three hundred works created by the artist about the Yanomami.