Katy'taya Catitu Tayassu is an animist* artist whose origins go beyond Brazil and France.
2023 year exhibited in Biennial Find out more
She was born on April 14 and the sun was shining, but the year 1966 itself was confined by a very hostile dictatorship. Ethnic, cultural, political and economic blindness had forged different forms of exclusion, mainly on the Mestizo, African and Native American populations. Katy’taya’s experience of trauma and the brutal power of denial has resulted in the recreating of essential vital connections becoming her second nature.
Katy’taya lives in the body of a woman, whose soul is profoundly connected to forests, minerals and cosmic mysteries.When she closes her eyes, certain frequencies tickle her ears and she can recognise lights in the sounds; Listening, perceiving, feeling, seeing, touching and also taming the tastes of sounds have become her daily explorations. Is she a synesthete? Not exactly. Her animist art is rooted in the life of trees and in metaphysical phenomena. Her performative actions entitled ‘ARBOReusement’ integrate the animist and eco-therapeutic consciousness. They are inspired by the movements of the trees and animated by sounds that go beyond habitual sonic perception. Katy’taya also explores the alchemy between objects, bodies, frequencies, vibrations, temperatures, movements and energies, and thus was born her “Metaphysics of Sounds”, which oscillates between light and colours, both resonant and dissonant. Over the years, Katy’taya has been crossing the thickness of the nights, seeking manifestations of sonic lights and new mysteries between the sacred spirits of the Earth and the supra-terrestrial beings.
*Animist Art is the most ancient art form – eminently extra-sensory and extra-lucid. People who practice Animism have perceptions which allow them to move past any material, tangible, physical and visible limits in order to listen, to see and to reconnect (very differently) with elements relating to metaphysical, imponderable and invisible realms.
Liverpool Biennial 2023
GREEN STAR (2023)
Katy’taya Catitu Tayassu presents a new atmospheric audio work on biennial.com. The piece is commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, with support from Fluxus Art Projects and Liverpool John Moores University. Tayassu is an Animist, believing that all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and in some cases words—have spirits, are animated and alive. She is inspired by sounds that go beyond normal human sense perception and the interconnectedness between objects bodies, frequencies, vibrations, movements and energies. Designed as an intimate experience, to be listened to lying down and through headphones, ‘GREEN STAR’ (2023) is both a soundscape and awakening which celebrates the earthly and spiritual forces which the artist perceives. It is a translation of the call and response
Katy’taya Catitu Tayassu presents a new atmospheric audio work on biennial.com. The piece is commissioned by Liverpool Biennial, with support from Fluxus Art Projects and Liverpool John Moores University. Tayassu is an Animist, believing that all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and in some cases words—have spirits, are animated and alive. She is inspired by sounds that go beyond normal human sense perception and the interconnectedness between objects bodies, frequencies, vibrations, movements and energies. Designed as an intimate experience, to be listened to lying down and through headphones, ‘GREEN STAR’ (2023) is both a soundscape and awakening which celebrates the earthly and spiritual forces which the artist perceives. It is a translation of the call and response between natural elements and atmospheric responses, reflecting the artist’s sensory experience of the world. Tayassu’s practice engages with the metaphysical and the extra-sensory; listening, perceiving, feeling, seeing and touching sounds and lights. The artist invites us to feel the sensory effects of imperceptible natural sounds; the whistle between grains of sand, the dance of the wind, the waves caused by a storm, the ominous noises of the night. The work is a manifestation of the invisible and a tribute to ‘uMoya’s’ links between visible and invisible forces. It is a digital landscape, a sound painting and a spiritual perception, dedicated to the freedom of a new consciousness and symbiosis.
GREEN STAR (2023)