VIENNA.- Aru Kuxipa Sacred Secret is TBA21's latest artist-centered initiative of commissioning interdisciplinary and unconventional projects devoted to social and environmental concerns. The collaborative journey that the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto, the Huni Kuin, and TBA21 have embarked on marks a crucial extension of the concerns that have been evident in Neto’s oeuvre over the past 20 years: a celebration of the sensuality of being, the unity of bodies and nature, and a longing for spiritual vision. Neto’s collaboration with the Huni Kuin people unfolds as an pioneering experiment, establishing a zone of encounter with our “ancestral futures” and an investigation of the teachings of plants and the spiritual nature of objects. “By co-authoring this exhibition with them in their own territory geographically and conceptually, this exhibition is attempting to draw a consensus between different creative impulses, and sensitize an audience which is increasingly interested in work that is informed by other practices. Work that lies between a fine balance of conscience and meaning is the basis of truth. This new body of work transcends the conceptual framework laid down by previous generations, and allows the art to flow into a narrative that shares its concerns to a public yearning to be further sensitized about issues that affect us all, not just in remote localities in which they were born,” says Francesca von Habsburg, founder and chairwoman of TBA21.

With this new collaborative engagement, Neto mobilizes a deep understanding of indigenous wisdom and tradition and the relational and perspectival nature of the Huni Kuin’s world vision. Aru Kuxipa will transform TBA21–Augarten into a space of secret ritual, participation, and activation, hosting spiritual and ceremonial gatherings. At the center of the exhibition, a kupixawa, an immersive space of celebration, gathering, and contemplation, will be designed by Neto. Members of the Huni Kuin will reside in Vienna for the preparation and initiation of the exhibition and enter into dialogue with Neto’s artistic language through a diversity of knowledge, expressions, and experiences: music, sounds, drawings, weavings, rituals, herbaria, use of medical and sacred plants, “teacher plants,” and everyday objects. Ritual and magic objects collected from the Huni Kuin and from other indigenous Amazonian tribes, some on loan from Vienna’s renowned Weltmuseum, will be presented in a display fabricated from Lycra and spiced with pepper and lavender. The planned intervention will both contextualize and seek to reverse the encyclopedic (re)presentation of indigenous artifacts and the objectification of knowledge in traditional museum settings.

Neto’s new commission, combined with earlier major works by the artist from TBA21’s collection, demonstrate his long-standing dedication to divine forms and engage with an understanding of the body as part of the spiritual and material universe. Likewise, Aru Kuxipa engages with the larger political issues driving the recognition of the rights of indigenous communities today: the importance of preserving common lands and of opposing the injustice and criminalization that indigenous communities face with respect to violated land rights and the destruction of their biodiverse habitat.

In conjunction with the Livro da Cura (Book of Healing), published in Portuguese and the Hatxa Kuĩ language in collaboration with Editora Dantes and "initiated" in Vienna in an English version, Aru Kuxipa engages with the large universe of indigenous knowledge, which has been sidelined and exoticized for centuries but which opens multiple entry points into a rethinking of our present moment.

The Livro da Cura contains descriptions of the 109 plant species used in the indigenous therapies of the Huni Kuin and their curative properties. This ancestral knowledge and sacred spiritual philosophy are at the core of the exhibition, the international symposium, and the rituals.

Unfolding in two institutional venues and over two continents, this collaborative exhibition engages with partners in both Austria and Brazil. While the Kunsthalle Krems focuses on a retrospective view of Neto’s nearly two decades of artistic production, TBA21 showcases the artist’s latest explorations and engagements. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of symposia and educational programs at TBA21–Augarten.