Uýra Sodoma

Emerson (1991, BR) is an Indigenous visual artist. A graduate of Biology and Ecology, they are also part of art education in riverside communities. They reside in Manaus, an industrial territory in the middle of the Central Amazon, where they transform themself into Uýra, a manifestation in animal and plant flesh that moves to expose and cure colonial systemic diseases.

Through organic elements, using the body as a support, they embodie a tree that walks and speaks through photoperformance and performance. Emerson is interested in living systems and their violations. Through the lens of diversity, dissidence, functioning and adaptation, they (re)tell natural stories, of enchantment and existing crossroads in the forest-city landscape.

As in Prishtina and countless other places across the world, rivers in the Brazilian city of Manaus have vanished. To make way for commerce, specifically the rubber trade, these ancient waterways were transformed into roadways – to devastating effect on the environment and the people who live there. Hundreds were slaughtered during construction.

Embodying a “tree that walks”, Uýra Sodoma enacts the recovery of the rivers, the fertility of the soil and the rich diversity of plant life. Uýra is the alter-ego of Emerson, a non-binary indigenous biologist, ecologist, educator and artist.

An at once archaic and futuristic hybrid figure, they work across multiple media including performance, photography, installation, lectures and classes. Confronting racism and transphobia is as important to them as environmental education.

Whereas the performative photographs of Retomada explore the vegetal and spiritual recuperation of sites of neglect, the installation Malhadeira reimagines the hydrographic network of Manaus, still submerged beneath roads and avenues. Uýra regards each as an overtly political denouncement and manifesto.