Brazil · Body Adornment / Body Painting
Pintura corporal Mẽbêngôkre (Portuguese); the Kayapó call themselves Mẽbêngôkre
The painting of the body by the Kayapó (Mẽbêngôkre) peoples of the southeastern Amazon with two plant pigments: black from the juice of the genipapo fruit (Genipa americana), mixed with charcoal, which oxidizes and stains the upper layers of the skin for a week or two; and red from the oily paste of ground urucum (annatto, Bixa orellana) seeds, used especially on the face. Women are the painters: among the Xikrin, a Kayapó group, painting is exclusively women's work, practiced as habitually as farming, cooking and childcare. They apply the paint with the palm of the hand, with a wooden comb that stripes bands of paint, and with a fine stylet cut from a palm-leaf rib, and a full-body design can take several hours. A pattern combines a base of parallel lines with highly stylized motifs drawn from fish, birds, tapir, deer, jaguar, snakes, turtles, butterflies and plants. The Kayapó regard painting as part of being human: a newborn is painted with genipapo once the umbilical cord falls, in recognition of its personhood. Mothers paint their children for hours, and a young mother learns on her own child's body. Children of both sexes receive the same designs; adult designs follow age, sex and social role. Painting is held to be both beautiful (mei) and correct (kumren).
Risk level: Stable · Not inscribed
PARTIAL RECORD BY DESIGN. This record documents only the publicly exhibited, gallery-shown dimension of a craft tradition rooted in the material culture of Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion of Yoruba origin centered in Salvador, Bahia.
The carving of wood blocks into simple, bold black-on-white relief images and their hand-printing as covers for literatura de cordel — small, hand-printed chapbooks of narrative poetry sold hanging from strings at markets and fairs across…
The making of saddles, sandals (alpargatas), bags, and clothing from hand-tooled, naturally-dyed leather, a craft rooted in the ofício de vaqueiro (cattle-driving) tradition of Brazil's dry, thorny caatinga interior, dating to 16th-century…
The collection of riverbed clay, tempering it with cauxi — a freshwater sponge or coral that grows on riverbanks and vegetation roots — and hand-building it into vessels ranging from small pots to bowls up to 115 cm in diameter, practiced…
The modeling, incising, and painting of clay vessels, funerary urns, figurines, and ritual objects in a tradition descending directly from the pre-Columbian Marajoara culture, a sophisticated mound-building society that flourished on…
The making of the berimbau — a single-stringed musical bow consisting of a curved wood bow (verga or arco), a steel string (arame), and a resonating chamber made from a dried, hollowed gourd (cabaça) — the leading instrument of capoeira,…
The creation of small-scale, richly detailed Persian paintings, an art form first established in ancient Persia before spreading to China, Turkey, and other Middle Eastern countries, and directly modernized in the twentieth century most…
The Chin facial tattoo tradition (မျက်နှာတက် myin dat) is the practice of tattooing the faces of Chin women with sub-group-specific patterns — historically a coming-of-age practice for Chin women beginning around age 11–15, producing…
The hand-tapped tattooing tradition of the Butbut people of Kalinga province, northern Luzon, applied by a mambabatok (traditional tattooist) using a thorn from a pomelo or calamansi tree affixed to a bamboo stick, struck rhythmically with…
The Patan school of thangka painting is Nepal's distinct contribution to the broader Tibeto-Buddhist thangka tradition — distinct from both Tibetan thangka (Menri or Karma Gadri styles) and Bhutanese Lhazo (CRAFT-0533) in its…
A largely self-taught, untrained painting tradition rendering Haitian rural life, history, and — most distinctively — Vodou spiritual imagery in bold, flat color and intuitive composition, catalyzed institutionally by Le Centre d'Art, an…
A self-taught primitivist painting tradition rendering Honduran street scenes, market life, and small-town landscapes in bold, direct color, founded by José Antonio Velásquez (1906–1983), widely regarded as the founder of Honduran…