The Epiphany Of Masks

A Dialogical Experience About Transcultural Communications

Abstract

During his travels through Amazonia (1783-1792) the naturalist Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira collected and made drawings and paintings of many masks of indigenous peoples of the region between the upper Amazon and the
Rio Negro. For a long time this material was stored in Portuguese archives. It has been indexed and exposed only in the late twentieth century. The article reports the experience to bring together, on the one hand, the images and descriptions contained in the records of this material and, on the other, interpretations and narratives made today by intellectuals, leaders and students of Ticuna people. In the dialogue, articulated by the ethnographer, conventional notions of tribe, ethnicity and culture are revealed as extremely limited, highlighting the need for new concepts related
to time and transcultural communications.