Isadora Matos (Aĩbu Collective)
“The experiences I have lived through have brought me to question the origin of what is now called Brazil and the marginalisation and erasure of our identities, thus the essence of my work is to bring out the nature of all of our culture that has long been attacked by globalisation.” – Isadora Matos
Matos is a young visual artist, currently based in Acre state, where she works with paint on canvas and develops projects with the Kayatibu group of young Huni Kuin artists. Matos’s mother is from Vale do Mucuri in Minas Gerais, which she escaped for São Paulo to raise her child away from the slave-like conditions that were imposed upon her as a teenager.
At the age of 15, Matos developed a project together with the Guarani people in Tekoa Pyau village, which is the smallest demarcated indigenous land in Brazil, located in São Paulo, meaning it suffers from the spread of the city alongside many other results of colonisation. Through an event that combined participatory activities with raising donations of food and hygiene products, the group worked to increase the visibility of Indigenous people in the city – the city within the indigenous territory.