Jaider Esbell Venice Biennale Art Exhibition

The works of Jaider Esbell (1979-2021 Brazil) are exhibited at the Corderie of the Arsenal in Venice.

As a painter, sculptor and writer, this artist from the Macuxi people had put his magnificent talent at the service of Brazil's indigenous culture and art.

As early as 2013, he founded the Jaider Esbell Contemporary Art Gallery to exhibit the works of artists from Roraima, his native country in northwestern Brazil.

“For ten years, I worked in total immersion in my culture, trying to communicate with the world and offer a few dialogues through different types of artistic languages,” said Jaider during an interview where he specified that he wanted to develop the indigenous movement through the arts.

He believed that artists worldwide could change the world through an exchange “that would allow them to think deeply about their presence and action on this planet.”

The paintings of Jaider Esbell presented at the Venice Biennale were exhibited at the Sao Paulo Biennale, which ended in December 2021.

They were then part of an exhibition exclusively dedicated to this artist in February 2022 at the Galeria Millan in Sao Paulo, where were exhibited some sixty paintings.

In October 2021, the Centre Pompidou purchased two paintings by Jaider Esbell, who, in a few months, had become the rising star in the world of international art.

Jaider Esbell committed suicide in November 2021, during the weekend when the director of the Venice Biennale was travelling to Sao Paulo to meet him and invite him to participate.

Jaider Esbell “Transformaçao/Ressurgência de Makunaimî”

Painting - Acrilic on Canvas (100 x 100 cm) 2018
A complex network of abstract shapes made of curves and scrolls of all colours shows the power of nature in the face of the exploitation of the dominant society.

The great ancestor of the Macuxi people, Makunaimî, is a central figure in many paintings by the artist who sometimes depicts him in his relationship with the vital forces of the Amazon.

Jaider Esbell “A luta do boi com Makunaimî”

Painting - Acrilic on Canvas (100 x 100 cm) 2017
This checkered body drawn by broad blue lines of headless cattle emptying its multicoloured guts refers to the struggle against the dominant society's disorderly exploitation of indigenous lands.

An unfair expropriation, coupled with an ecological disaster.

Jaider Esbell “A Vaca”

Painting - Acrilic on Canvas (100 x 100 cm) 2017
The funeral image of a cow's head with its tongue hanging on this black background is connected with “A luta do boi com Makunamî.”

The aim is to end the invasion of beef production and the destruction of forests.

Jaider Esbell “Kan”

Painting - Acrilic on Canvas (100 x 100 cm) 2017
Kan: the great matador, the great killer. In the cosmology of the Macuxi, the Kan is a being in relation to the intangible world and to magic. When it incarnates into a person, it becomes a predator or protector.

The artist drew this fantastic and frightening being with an acrylic-based pen on a dark night background made with acrylic paint to give the feeling of a spectral world. At the same time, the brilliance of the colours brings liveliness to the image to provide a psychedelic effect.

Sensations and visions of an ultra-world oscillate between the concrete and the imaginary, the world of indigenous cosmologies where there is no separation between the spiritual and the material.

The amazing figures in Jaider Esbell's paintings are drawn as engravings or tattoos that show the dynamism and vivacity of the symbols still present in the daily lives of the Brazilian indigenous people.