Anita Ekman

Anita Ekman, born in the Atlantic Rainforest (São Paulo, 1985), is a Brazilian visual and performance artist and a researcher of rock art, Pre-Columbian art and rainforest history. Her collaborative performances in archaeological sites explore women's roles in art and history, proposing an expansion of the conceptual horizon of the Atlantic World. Developing a series of photographs and videos through these performances, Ekman and collaborators such as Sandra Nanayna (Tariano) and Sandra Benites (Guarani Nhandeva, anthropologist and curator) discuss the role
of Indigenous people allied with members of the African diaspora in the history of the Atlantic Rainforest.

Currently, Ekman is working together with Sandra Benites and the Maracá Institute in international curatorial projects. In 2021 she received a prize from the French embassy in Brazil and the Goethe Institute in 2021 to conduct a curatorial investigation of archaeological and ethnological collections in museums for the project: "Ore ypy rã - The Time of Origins: A History of Rainforests in Indigenous Cosmovisions".

Ekman is Assistant Curator of Ka'a Body: Cosmovision of the Rainforest, which ran at Paradise Row on Bourdon Street from 26 November 2021 - 11 February 2022, and brought together 27 artists and collectives (and one non-Indigenous artist) in an important display of the cosmology of Indigenous peoples that was also the first international presentation of Indigenous art outside of Brazil to be curated by an Indigenous curator, esteemed anthropologist and curator at MASP in São Paulo Sandra Benites.