Marcio Pimenta

SYNOPSIS

Just over 500 years ago, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan discovered a sea passage in the south of the planet, a region unknown to Europeans, who called it Terra Australis Incognita. This discovery united the world in the first globalization of modern society. The pass became known as Strait of Magellan. In the wake of Magellan came the European farmers, who had already domesticated plants and animals and, upon reaching the now named Tierra del Fuego, found hunter-gatherers who were living there over 10,000 years, as a result of the great adventure of man’s migration throughout the planet. Among the tribes there was an ethnic group that would be known as Selk’nam. The meeting between European farmers and hunter-gatherers meant the death sentence of the latter. A tragedy still to be discussed. Considered extinct in the history books and laws written by the victors, the survivors claim to be alive. And now they are fighting for recognition.

PROPOSAL

Proposes to, through photography, tell a story wrapped in symbolisms and materialities of the Selk’nam, indigenous people inhabitant of Tierra del Fuego, which were considered extinct by official records, but recently rediscovered their roots, are now fighting for their rights and exploring new ways to live their story - all that happening permeated by the mythical landscape of Patagonia, place in which the great human wandering adventure found its final land - finis terrae.

This work was developed and published with the support of the Pulitzer Center. However, there is still great room to enrich it. Due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, only one Selk’nam family was photographed, yet the people is surely diverse (living in different chilean regions and also in Argentina) and presents in itself different ways of relating to the past. Photographing and interviewing more individuals would enrich the portrait of an ethnicity going through the process of rediscovering its identity, bringing a much more in-depth perspective regarding the possibilities of a people struggling to reframe their future. Furthermore, the exuberant scenery in which it all takes place, Tierra del Fuego, needs to be further explored by lenses and, above all, by the Selk’nam themselves, so that the portrait of a possible future can be comprised of people rediscovering themselves alive after years of being erased and estranged from their territory of origin. Besides that, an important part of the project consists in revisiting old photographies portraying ancient Selk’nams and artifacts used by them, so that its past takes form and materiality. Still, full access to those records have not been possible yet, in the breadth of the possibility. Expanding the contact with those records that compose the story of a people is of great importance, for with a more in-depth portrait of the past, unforeseen possibilities for the future may be contemplated.

The project could benefit from a diversity of supports. The most important being time and space. The support coming from a renowned institution is decisive in terms of having access to places and the extend of reach and influence that an artistic project may have. Besides that, expanding the network of contacts with other artists and professionals from other areas of expertise - specially anthropologists, geographers, sociologists and designers - could bring hard to measure future benefits to the Selk’nam people.