Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel in São Paulo presents 'Thapiri/Sonho', the first gallery exhibition in the city by Yanomami artist Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe. The show features paintings and monotypes that translate daily encounters in the Venezuelan Amazon—animal traces, plant structures, and natural formations—into a graphic vocabulary of lines, dots, circles, and repeating patterns. Hakihiiwe's work draws on Yanomami oral traditions and mnemonic structures, linking observed reality with dream encounters. The exhibition follows his 2023 solo presentation at MASP and includes works previously shown at MAC Parque Forestal in Santiago, Chile, and Sala TAC in Caracas.
This exhibition matters because it brings Hakihiiwe's distinctive Indigenous visual language to a major Brazilian gallery, amplifying Yanomami perspectives within the contemporary art world. Hakihiiwe's practice is increasingly recognized internationally, with his work appearing in major exhibitions at the Museo Tamayo (Mexico City), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), and the Fondation Cartier (Paris), as well as the 2022 Venice Biennale. The show underscores the growing visibility of Indigenous artists and the importance of preserving and activating cultural, symbolic, and ecological knowledge through art.