The Kayapó

The Kayapó are hunters, fishermen, farmers and collectors.  In the beginning, they occupied a vast region and  used to explore it in a sustainable way. As long as it was possible, they kept themselves isolated and unsociable, until it was no longer possible to resist to the contact with white people that had been exploring the forest looking for its wealth.

The Kayapó are famous for their feathered art, which embeds a complex symbology and a vast range of meanings regarding the individual who wears it.

Prior to the contact with the white, neither the man nor the woman ever wore any type of clothes, other than a few adornments such as necklaces, bracelets and earrings. Nowadays they wear clothes. Women wear cotton dresses, that remind designs created in the sixties´ by  stylist Yves Saint Laurent, inspired in Mondrian´s work,  and men wear shorts and  paint themselves according to their tradition, because painting is the traditional outfit of the Kayapó. Children, since their birth, are also painted and wear glass beads adornments.

During their dances and feasts, both men and women wear special clothes, feathers and head ornaments, necklaces and other adornments. Men also adorn the lips with labrets (lip wooden sticks). Apart from these special occasions, they are also painted and wear necklaces, earrings and bracelets, according to the traditional Kayapó adornment.

Women have some specialized activities, such as cotton spinning, creation of adornments made with seeds, cotton and colored glass beads and execution of the elaborated corporal painting, composed of an infinite number of graphemes drawn with extraordinary accuracy. The vast variety of corporal graphemes and the elaborated glass bead adornments are part of the splendid clothing of this people.

The Kayapó corporal painting and the glass bead adornments are admired by the whole world. Such admiration causes surprise at those who do not expect to find such beauty and elegance out of  major urban centers. But this beauty and elegance co-exist simultaneously in both the forest and in our stone cities.