For the past few years, CBPA and InterArts graduate students have been enjoying a collaborative relationship with Yąnomamö artisans of the Orinoco River basin in southern Venezuela. The project, spearheaded by Columbia Assistant Professor Melissa Potter and interdisciplinary artist and community activist Laura Anderson Barbata, has been providing an ongoing dialogue between students and alumni of the Book and Paper graduate program, and the artistic and spiritual vision of Sheroanawë Hakihiiwë.

“In introducing Hakihiiwë to papermaking techniques developed for fine art practice, CBPA has opened up a landscape of tools with which to express a very traditional symbology and belief system,” says Potter. “Hakihiiwë’s artistic collaboration with InterArts students has broadened their worldview, putting them in touch with environmental issues and an artistic vision outside their normal experience.”

Work from the most recent summer collaboration is featured in the current Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions’ Annual Exhibition. The Brodsky Center, which is dedicated to the promotion of editions, paper, and the printed image as central to contemporary art practice, is housed in the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
BCIE was established as an international forum for the exchange of new ideas in print and papermaking processes, which makes it an idea space for the exhibition of Hakihiiwë’s work, both the collaborative pieces created with InterArts grad students last summer, as well as some of his solo work.

The exhibition runs from December 19, 2012 through January 17, 2013, at the Mason Gross Galleries in New Brunswick NJ. For more information on the collaborative project between CBPA and the Yąnomamö, download a copy of the CBPA studio research publication Practice by clicking here.