Claudia Andujar: from representation to manifestation of the invisible

Abstract

This article initially investigates the ways in which Claudia Andujar seeks, based on the construction of her own imagery syntax, to represent the xapiri spirits of Yanomami cosmology, visible only to shamans. Subsequently, from the dialogue between the shamanic way of seeing, described by Davi Kopenawa, and the anthropological theory of art by Alfred Gell, a new possible relationship between Andujar's photography and the xapiri spirits is understood, expanded from the iconic representation, related to similarity, to aniconic representation, as an index of presence and, in this way, the image can be thought of as a manifestation. Finally, such power of the image is understood from the perspective of the agency of the act of seeing, so that the visible is constituted only through other bodies able to see it.