Forest Ruins
Forest Ruins is a personal ongoing project that addresses the role of cities in the climate crisis from the perspective of the Guarani Mbyá Indigenous people in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, and how their philosophy, culture and traditions offer alternative paths of existence and resistance to a colonial development model. Telling the unrevealed story of the Guaranis on the edges of the largest metropolis on the continent is a provoking reminder for Western culture to rethink its consumption habits, to look back at its rivers, areas of preservation and degradation as the environment in which they are inserted.
An unidentified Guarani Mbyá warrior waves a flag made of plastic from garbage at Pico do Jaraguá, the highest point in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, on June 30, 2021. The protest, composed of hundreds of Indigenous ancestral residents of the villages around the peak, was held with the intention of blocking the signal of the telephone and television communication antennas as a way to draw attention to the loss of Indigenous territorial rights during the government of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.
