Feliciano Lana – The Story of White People
Sat, 24 May 2025 – Mon, 31 May 2027
Humboldt Forum, Berlin
Website
The exhibition Feliciano Lana – The Story of White People presents for the first time the powerful series "A História dos Brancos" by the late Indigenous artist, storyteller, and kumu (healer) Feliciano Lana Sibé. Known for his unique watercolor works, Lana captured the layered histories of the upper Rio Negro, reflecting on the profound encounters, fractures, and connections that have shaped this region.
Lana's art tells of the repeated arrival of the Whites – missionaries, soldiers, and scientists – who sought to name the unknown, to impose order on the unpredictable, and to extract wealth from the land. These works are not just images but traces of worlds touching, colliding, and overlapping. They speak of the forces of capitalism, colonialism, and extraction, but also of resistance and survival.
"No one ever asked me about the story of white people." – Feliciano Lana Sibé
With these words, Lana described the unexpected request from the Ethnological Museum, for which he created this final series shortly before his death. It is a radical act of self-historicization, reclaiming the power to narrate one's own history and offering an Indigenous perspective that has often been erased or misrepresented. His watercolors serve as dynamic visual archives, preserving and transmitting Indigenous knowledge, while resisting the linear, extractive gaze of Western historiography.
In addition to Lana’s work, the exhibition features contemporary pieces by a new generation of Indigenous artists from the Brazilian Amazon, including Gustavo Caboco, Naine Terena, Elisclesio Macuxi, Jaime Diakara, Rita Huni Kuin, and Yaka Huni Kuin (Edi Sales). These artworks, commissioned as part of the 99 Questions artistic residency in 2022, continue the conversation Lana initiated, exploring themes of collective memory, resilience, and future-making. They reflect on the ongoing legacies of colonialism, revealing histories shaped by violence yet marked by the strength of survival and the transformative power of cultural resistance.
Together, these works demonstrate how stories are understood in cyclical, relational, and dynamic forms, challenging the linear narratives of the past and inviting us to confront the ongoing impact of colonial histories. They call us to engage with Indigenous ways of knowing and to collectively imagine futures where many worlds fit.
© Olga Khrustaleva ©Michael Dieminger