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Paraguayan photographer Luis Vera to showcase Chaco Ayoreo project at Curitiba Biennial
🇵🇾 Paraguay /Culture & Society

Paraguayan photographer Luis Vera to showcase Chaco Ayoreo project at Curitiba Biennial

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

In-depth Named sources Context piece
  • Paraguayan photographer Luis Vera will present his exhibition "We are alive, now we wear clothes" at the Curitiba Biennial in Brazil.
  • The exhibition uses digital photography and databending to explore the situation of Ayoreo communities living in voluntary isolation in the Paraguayan Chaco.
  • It addresses the transformations these communities undergo as they come into contact with Western society and the impact of deforestation and infrastructure projects.

Paraguayan visual artist Luis Vera is set to unveil his photographic exhibition, "Seguimos vivos, ahora usamos ropa" (We are alive, now we wear clothes), at the Curitiba Biennial in Brazil. The exhibition, which opens Monday at the Paraguayan Consulate Cultural Space in Curitiba, is part of the official program for ArtWeek Curitiba and the 16th International Contemporary Art Biennial of Curitiba.

Vera's work combines digital photography with databending, a technique that involves altering digital files to create new images and visual effects. Through a series of photographic quatriptychs, the exhibition focuses on the Ayoreo indigenous groups who remain in voluntary isolation in the Paraguayan Chaco. It also examines the profound cultural and physical transformations experienced by community members as they encounter Western society.

The exhibition's title is drawn from a phrase documented by anthropologist Benno Glauser during his research on Ayoreo communities. Vera explains that the phrase alludes to messages left by individuals who abandoned their forest life to communicate with relatives still living in isolation. This expression, he notes, encapsulates the tension between physical survival and the cultural adaptation processes these communities face.

"Umbrales" (Thresholds), the curatorial theme of the 2026 Curitiba Biennial, explores the intersections of humanity, technology, and artificial intelligence. Vera's exhibition engages with this theme by examining the boundaries and friction between different ways of inhabiting the world, using the Ayoreo's reality and the environmental pressures of deforestation and infrastructure development in the Chaco as a starting point. Art critic Ticio Escobar contributed the curatorial text, highlighting Vera's use of databending to construct a narrative about the messages exchanged between isolated Ayoreo groups and those integrated into contact communities.

We are alive, now we wear clothes

— Ayoreo phraseThe title of Luis Vera's exhibition, referring to messages left by Ayoreo individuals who transitioned from forest life.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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