Julien Bismuth's Hiaitsiihi Video Diptych at Nomas Foundation

The Nomas Foundation in Rome presents a video diptych by French artist Julien Bismuth (b. 1973, Paris) documenting his two stays with the Hiaitsiihi people in the Amazon, facilitated by anthropologist Marco Antonio Gonçalves. The first, 30-minute video features unedited footage with subtitled interview fragments by Gonçalves, often shot in darkness around a hearth, including moments when curious hands briefly take over the camera. The second video is described as magnetically captivating. The Hiaitsiihi, also known as Pirahã, are a seminomadic community living on beaches in male-female dyads, with minimal possessions and a cosmology of five cosmic levels where bodies are perfect but mortal in this world and imperfect but immortal as 'abaixi' in the spirit world. They reject the link between sex and conception, believing pregnancy results from a woman's fright during a natural event, such as burning herself on a hot grilled fish, which then names the child. Sexual intercourse forms the body in the womb: menses create flesh, sperm creates bones. The community has no political hierarchy or economic prestige, values couple intimacy, and communicates in intoned, melodic phrases. Their calm, mutual listening, and expressive verbal communication are striking, along with their Western-style clothing as aesthetic attributes. The exhibition runs at Nomas Foundation in Rome.