FAO’s Artful Celebration of the Amazon and the Risk of Tokenism
Lucas Memmola, Paradise Bank, art installation, Rome, 2024. Photo: ©️FAO/Alessandra Benedetti. Editorial use only. Copyright ©️FAO.
An art installation commissioned by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recently celebrated the role of the people of the Amazon, especially the Shanenawá people, as the guardians of the world’s largest forest and the defenders of food security in the region. The Amazon people are the only ones who know how to preserve nature while growing everything they need for their well-being, and their knowledge is thus inestimable. However, the art installation Paradise Bank by Italo-Brazilian artist Lucas Memmola unintentionally offers a warning on the ever-present risk of tokenism in the West.
The display opened on October 10 for the World Food Forum 2024 (WFF, October 14–18) hosted by the FAO in its Roman headquarters. The installation is curated by Tramandars, a Naples-based art collective with commissions from several institutions, collaborating with FAO since 2022. Memmola, who often plays with natural elements and explores environmental art, has worked with them in the past. His artwork will be displayed until November 7 in a greenhouse of Rome’s Botanical Garden.
Lucas Memmola, Paradise Bank, antechamber, art installation, Rome, 2024. Photo: ©️FAO/Alessandra Benedetti. Editorial use only. Copyright ©️FAO.
Paradise Bank consists of a fictional seed vault built by Memmola, with an antechamber containing sacred artifacts belonging to the Amazonian Shanenawá people, including celebrative spears. These artifacts guard a few Amazonian foods native to the forest, such as wild cocoa, guaraná seeds, açaí, and Brazil nuts, lying in an open security box. The antechamber leads to an actual steel vault with sounds from the Amazonian forest to give the idea of entering a protected, inestimable environment.
From the left, Carla Barroso Carneiro, Brazil ambassador and permanent representative to FAO, QU Dongyu, FAO director-general, and Lucas Memmola, artist, pointing to Shanenawá artifacts, visiting the antechamber of Paradise Bank, Rome, 2024. Photo: ©️FAO/Alessandra Benedetti. Editorial use only. Copyright ©️FAO.
The people of the Amazon “are the guardians of the forest,” Memmola tells IMPULSE, “the objects in the antechamber evoke their presence.” Preparing his artwork, Memmola spoke with a representative of the Shanenawá people, who would later send him the sacred artifacts for display. The hope is to help spread their culture and sensibilize the WFF on their struggles with illegal operations in the Amazon. “[The Shanenawá people] understood the value of my project. For them, it is important to promote their culture and let the world know they exist,” Memmola says. They also have an Instagram page. Memmola recalls that Francisca Andréa de Melo Brandão, a representative of the Shanenawá people, told him: “We know how to keep up a forest, and we have been doing it forever. We respect her.” Memmola adds, “The artwork is an ambassador of their instances.”
Lucas Memmola presenting Paradise Bank at the Botanical Garden in Rome, 2024. Photo: ©️FAO/Alessandra Benedetti. Editorial use only. Copyright ©️FAO.
Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, allowed for large-scale and accelerated destruction of the Amazon. The forest is constantly burning and dying because of climate change-induced droughts, illegal mining, oil operations, and wood cutting to make space for agricultural and livestock farming. Even as Lula’s government reinstated and increased protections, Brazil kept struggling to actually prevent ecological devastation and the killing of indigenous people, whose fate is tied to that of the forest. “The artwork wants to promote indigenous agriculture because they are the only ones that know how to farm without destroying the habitat, as they can always find food in the forest as if it was a form of permaculture,” Memmola says.
From the left, Lucas Memmola, artist, Carla Barroso Carneiro, Brazil ambassador and permanent representative to FAO, QU Dongyu, FAO director-general, visiting the vault of Paradise Bank, Rome, 2024. Photo: ©️FAO/Alessandra Benedetti. Editorial use only. Copyright ©️FAO.
However, Memmola admits to having never interacted in person with the Shanenawá people. He was born in Bari, a city in Southern Italy. His mother comes from the Brazilian region of Rio Branco, which, he says, he could not visit despite having gone on several trips to Brazil. While his great-great-grandmother came from an Amazonian tribe, his family can no longer tell which because of the long-lost connection with records that speak to their ancestry. Memmola’s contact with the Shanenawá people was first established through a parent living in Brazil. Moreover, Memmola could not provide exact information on some of the artifacts displayed in the art installation, while the Amazonian sounds used in the installation came from an internet library. These elements downplay the seriousness of the artwork and the strength of its concept—even hinting at tokenism.
Memmola defends the piece by saying that the Shanenawá people were actively informed of the project, approved it, and will be contacted for the outcome. When questioned by IMPULSE, Memmola believes he had carried out his role as an intermediary for the Shanenawá people with respect. “If they didn’t feel represented, they wouldn’t have sent me the artifacts,” he says. However, organizers are also to blame, as no representative was invited from the tribe, and no speech by the Shanenawá people was read at the inauguration, which was attended by the FAO’s delegates, including the organization’s Director-General QU Dongyu and Carla Barroso Carneiro, Brazil’s ambassador and permanent representative to the FAO.
Lucas Memmola’s Paradise Bank will be on view in Rome’s Botanical Garden until November 7, 2024.
