Salon K: Cultural Reforestation

With her talk, artist and environmental activist Olinda Tupinambá invites us to explore cultural reforestation as a transformative action. She understands this as a political practice that reclaims and strengthens Indigenous cultures and knowledge, while fostering reconnection between environment and community. Her involvement in reforestation initiatives in Southern Bahia, Brazil, intersects with her artistic practice to expose environmental injustices and affirm Indigenous presence and resistance. In resonance with Indigenous philosopher and environmental activist Ailton Krenak’s call to reforest the imagination, her work cultivates alternative forms of kinship that extend beyond the human.

In cooperation with the Kulturdreieck, the following exchange opens a space for reflection on the redesign of Prinzenstraße by interweaving ecology, culture, and community engagement.

Olinda Tupinambá is a multidisciplinary artist with a degree in Social Communication. She is a cultural worker, performer and filmmaker. Her work is characterized by using her body as a political body - a body that transforms to speak of other possible worlds, to make environmental-political issues visible and to discuss the relationship between humans and nature, which is a recurring theme in some of her works. She has been working in the field of audiovisual media since late 2015, producing and directing ten independent films in the fields of documentary, fiction and performance.