Curatorial Projects, Lectures and Prizes
2023 – 2024 - 2025
IAIA Museum of contemporary Native Arts – MoCNA (Santa Fe, USA).
(February / May 2024)
Exhibition: Womb of the Earth by Sandra Benites, Cristine Takua and Anita Ekman. February 2024.
With support of Alexandra Mollof (Independent art advisory, Patron of Tate and a Member of Tate´s Latin American Acquisitions Committee) and Andy Warhol Foundation.
Peabody Museum Harvard (Boston, USA).
(May 2024)
Seminary in The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University: The Body-Territory of the Rainforest. Revisiting the Thayer and Morgan Expedition Collections through Indigenous Cosmovision and the Legacies of Slavery by Ilisa Barbash, Anita Ekman and Sandra Benites.
(2024, 2025) Cosmoperception of the Forest - Goethe Institute Rio de Janeiro
Creator and curator of the project together with Cristine Takua for the Goethe Institute in Rio de Janeiro to create 5 artistic residencies in indigenous communities ( Brazil, Colombia, Finland and Germany) for the creation of contemporary art that decolonizes the collections of German Museums created in the 19th century in the Brazilian Rainforest and presents another cosmovision about the history of Amazon and climate change for 30th UN Conference on Climate Change (COP 30) in the Amazon in 2025.
2023
Clark Fellow for summer 2023. Clark Art Institute (Williantown, USA).
(10th July- 20th August)
Peabody Museum Harvard (Boston, USA).
(20th July)
Research curator project. Revisiting the Thayer and Morgan Expedition Collections with Sandra Benites, Anita Ekman, Tom Cummins, Claudia Mattos and Ilisa Barbash.
Indiana University (Bloomington, USA).
(21th August – 1 September)
Invited by the Department of Art History (Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz, Art History Tanner-Opperman Chair in Honor of Roy Sieber) , Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS).
Jacob School of Music, Christoph Irmscher Director, Wells Scholars Program, Distinguished Professor and Provost Professor of English and The Arts & Humanities Council.
MAM RJ – Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
(May, 2023)
Supported by the Goethe Institute and the French Consulate in Rio de Janeiro.
Exhibition: Ore ypy rã – Tempo de Origem . Decolonization of indigenous archaeological collections in Brazil in museums in Europe and the United States by Sandra Benites and Anita Ekman. (May 2023).
Radicantes - International curatorial cooperative created by Nicolas Bourrriaud. (Paris, France).
Exhibition: KA´A BODY. Cosmovision of the Rainforest.
Curated by Sandra Benites and Anita Ekman (09-11.2002 – 14.01.2023)
https://radicants.com/exhibition/kaa-body/
2022 - 2021
Paradise Row Projects created by Nick Hackworth and Collector and Patron Pippa Hornby. (London, England).
Exhibition: KA´A BODY. Cosmovision of the Rainforest.
Curated by Sandra Benites and Anita Ekma. (26th November 2021 – 11th February 2022)
Curatorial research grant – 2021. Goethe Institut and the French Consulate in Rio de Janeiro.
Project: Ore ypy rã – Tempo de Origem by Sandra Benites and Anita Ekman. Performance art and 3D scanning of Indigenous archaeological artifacts (Marajoara) in museums in Europe (Quai Branly, Ethnographic Museum of Berlin, MAS- Antwerp). United States (Harvard Peabody Museum, Denver Museum). Brazil (Museu do Marajó, Museum Paraense Emílio Goeldi, MUSA Museum of the Amazon, Museum Archeology of the Amazon UFAM, MASP, Museum of Archeology of USP). (2021 – 2023). Creation of an artistic residence on the island of Marajó (Atelier Mangue Marajó in partnership with Tufts University and Atlas of Lost Finds).
Universities involved: Tufts University, USP Institute of Technology Research, Wash-CNPq Program, University of Antwerp.
SP-Arte Cápsula 4 with Sandra Benites, Edgar Calel and Anita Ekman (São Paulo – Brazil)
SP–Arte in partnership with Galeria Jaqueline Martins created a public program (Cápsula) conceived by the Gallery together with critics and curators Mirtes Marins de Oliveira and Lisette Lagnado, which becomes part of the official program of the 17th SP-Arte. Capsula 4 was realized with Sandra Benites, Anita Ekman and Edgar Calel. They addressed the issue of feminist practices of resistance, the concept of frontier, territory and the importance of walking – both identity and physical – of the Guaraní and Maya peoples. The program takes place before and during the event, on the 16th and 23rd of October, and will be broadcast on the SP–Arte YouTube channel.
2013
Banamex Cultural Sponsorship (Brazil and México)
Anita Ekman was responsible for curator the Brazilian Indigenous art collection "Grandes Mestres da Arte Popular Ibero-americana: Fomento Cultural Banamex” (Great Masters of Ibero-American Folk Art: Banamex Cultural Sponsorship), featuring 800-plus works by over 500 contemporary and Indigenous artists hailing from more than 22 different Ibero-American countries.
Artist Practices and Participation in Exhibitions
Anita Ekman’s work has been featured in several collective exhibitions in Brazil and the world, as well as in two solo shows: Ocre Marajó, in September 2022 at the AMPAC- Marajó Island, with support from Tufts University, the Goethe Institut and the French Consulate in Brazil, and "Women of Samba - 100 Years of Samba" at Magnet Gallery in Melbourne, Australia, in 2016.
Her texts, research and artworks have been published in:
The United States’ Od Review magazine, featuring an essay by Christoph Irmscher on Anita Ekman’s Ochre Series https://odreview.com/2020/11/30/on-anita-ekmans-ochre/
https://odreview.com/2021/02/04/on-anita-ekmans-ochre-part-ii/
Her Ochre Series photographs have also been published by MoMA NY in an essay by Hlonipha Mokoena https://post.moma.org/the-ochre-people-reimaginado/
Brazilian contemporary art magazine Select:
https://www.select.art.br/ocre-a-origem-do-mundo/ and https://www.select.art.br/do-samba-ao-sambaqui-floresta-uma-invencao-cultural/
Collective Exhibitions and Lectures
2023
Bienal das Amazônias (Belém, Brazil)
MUBE - Brazilian Museum of Sculpture and Ecology (São Paulo, Brazil)
Collective exhibition: Pedra Viva – Serra da Capivara. O legado de Niède Guidon curated by Guilherme Wisnik. (April – August 2023).
Itaú Cultural and Tomie Otake (São Paulo, Brazil)
Collective exhibition: Ensaios para o Museu das Origens. Curated by Izabela Pucu, Paulo Miyada, and adjunct curators Ana Carolina Roman and Invited curators Daiara Tukano and Thiago de Paula. (September 2023)
CRAC – Alsace. Center rhénan d'art contemporain (Altkirch, France)
Collective exhibition The Four Cardinal Points are Three: South and North, curated by Amilcar Packer, presented at CRAC Alsace. (October 2022 - March 2023).
2022
Leviathan- Episode 8 by Shezad Dawood, Anita Ekman and Carlos Papa. (Brazil – London).
Director and animation creator for the film Leviathan- Episode 8, on Guaraní mythology, alongside director Carlos Papa, Cristine Takuá, and the curator Sandra Benites, for a project by the artist Shezad Dawood in London.
Harvard University (Boston, USA)
Anita Ekman was invited by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Student Center and the Food Literacy Project to deliver the lecture and workshop Embody the rainforest: Art and Resistance. https://green.harvard.edu/events/gsas-embodying-rainforest-art-resistance
In Harvard, Anita Ekman also conducted a week of research activities into the collections created by the Thayer and Morgan expeditions. She also had meetings to explore potential exhibition projects with curator Ilisa Barbash and Peabody Museum director Diana Loren. (April 2022)
TUFTS University (Boston, USA)
Invited by the Brazilian Art History professor Claudia Mattos. Lecture at the Department of Arts on her research and artworks based on precolonial archaeology in Marajó Island, Amazonas. (April 2022)
Indiana University (Indianopolis, USA)
Invited by Indiana University to participate:
As a lecturer in the event Brazilian Modern Art and Culture: 1922-2022. (September 2022)
Invited by Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz (Tanner-Opperman Chair of African Art History in Honor of Roy Sieber, Indiana University), of the Department of Art History, to deliver a lecture on her research and artworks on the African diaspora in Brazil and its connection with the United States. (September 2023)
April 2022. She has been invited by Indiana University for a week of activities including lectures at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and classes by Christoph Irmscher (Director of the Wells Scholars Program and Distinguished Professor of English) to students of the archaeologist Anee Pyburn and Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz (Tanner-Opperman Chair of African Art History in Honor of Roy Sieber Indiana University), Department of Art History.
2021
Peabody Museum - Harvard University. (Boston, USA)
On April 1st, 2021, alongside Sandra Benites (PhD candidate in anthropology at the National Museum and MASP curator), Anita Ekman was featured in the live stream "Race, Representation, and Agassiz’s Brazilian Fantasy," hosted by the Peabody Museum at Harvard. The event delved into the chapter written by Christoph Irmscher for the book "Own Way in the World," organized by Ilisa Barbash, Molly Rogers and Deborah On and released by Peabody Museum Press in 2020. https: //hmsc.harvard.edu/race-representation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=119uLdXgHR8
MoMA (New York, USA)
(C-MAP seminar series, Transversal Orientations)
Presented the video Tupi Valongo – Kunhanguereko
2020-2019
Oslo Kunstforening
Collective Exhibition: Listening to the Echoes of the South Atlantic.
https://en.oslokunstforening.no/listening-to-the-echoes-of-the-south-atlantic
HKW – Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin, Germany).
In 2019 and 2020, Anita worked on “Ventres da Mata Atlântica” (Wombs of the Atlantic Rainforest), a project involving Amilcar Packer, Sandra Benites, Carlos Papa, Cristine Takuá, Marcelo Noronha and Freg J. Stokes, with support from the Goethe Institut’s Ecos Fund, presented at the HKW - Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (2019).
2019
Galeria Pivô (São Paulo, Brazil - Ecos do Atlântico Sul - Goethe Institut)
https://www.pivo.org.br/exposicoes/pivo-recebe-instituto-goethe/
Performance Tupi Valongo. À flor da Terra
2018
- I Ecos do Atlântico Sul Conference (Goethe Institut Salvador)
https://www.goethe.de/ins/br/pt/kul/sup/ech/cos/eds/21265766.html
Performance Tupi Valongo – Cemetery of New Blacks and Old Indians.
Tupi Valongo is a collaborative performance project created by the artist Anita Ekman that looks to discuss and broaden the concept of an Atlantic World by examining the connections between Indigenous and African peoples in their diverse resistance strategies to protect their culture and the Brazilian forests. Since December 2018, different Indigenous, African and Afro-Brazilian artists have been invited to join the project by enacting performances in archaeological sites throughout Brazil. All performances have been captured on video by Marcelo Noronha (Maranduva Filmes production company).
OTHER PROJETS
For over 18 years now, Anita has been working in collaboration with Guaraní Mbya leaders, artists and thinkers on multiple intangible heritage protection projects. She has carried out numerous projects with Guaraní communities across South America (Paraguay, Argentine and Brazil) and organised the publication of books by Guaraní authors such as Timóteo da Silva Verá Tupã Popygua for the publishing house Editora Hedra’s Coleção Mundo Indígena (Indigenous World Collection). She has dedicated herself to collaborative research with Indigenous researchers such as Timóteo da Silva Verá Popygua and the Australian historian and artist Freg J. Stokes, to map the history of Indigenous resistance and extractive capitalism in South America.
Anita has also worked on the Safeguarding of Samba Matrices in Rio de Janeiro, as well as on several art projects with Samba masters (in the last 12 years).