Kaupüna swing

Contact us for availability of colors and graphics.

A “new indigenous product”, it was with these words that Kulikyrda Mehinako described the “Kaupüna” Swing.

Its design rises from the desire to enhance the buriti yarn, made by women who wrap very thin strips of straw around their thighs with quick movements, which they manage to gather after taking a boat down the river to collect material and then put it to dry.

Completely executed in the Kaupüna Village of the Mehinako ethnicity, located in the Xingu Indigenous Reserve, a piece was born that unites the design of a designer from São Paulo, who is passionate about Brazilian handicrafts, and the indigenous handicraft tradition.

Representing the artisanal work of women who harvest, clean, and prepare the buriti straw to make the thread with which they weave their traditional nets, and of men who enter the forest to find trees from which to take the wood to create zoomorphic benches adorned with charcoal and annatto-based graphics.

It was the first time in Kaupüna village that men and women worked together to create a single piece. Infinite emotion, immeasurable value!

The images in the photos are illustrative, as the creation in the village is free and the designs and color combinations can vary, which makes each swing always unique. If you want a particular color send us a message and we will be happy to check the possibility.

About the Xingu collection

Developed in partnership with Mehinako artisans, in Alto Xingu, a line of products created by Maria Fernanda Paes de Barros arise from the meeting of the past and the future to build a new present

It is amazing how vision, after immersive experiences in ancestral cultures, begins to have a greater sensitivity to see new ways of bringing our origin to contemporary world. It is along this path that Maria Fernanda Paes de Barros, artist, researcher and founder of Yankatu, travels. With her soul absorbed by the profound experiences of the places she goes through, Maria Fernanda, in her own way, captures a dose of each learning experience, bringing to surface revelations in form of pieces filled with value, as a manifest for the benefit of Brazilian identity. “Each trip I make, I become humbler, I perceive differences from new angles, relearning to see and understand meanings through the other's place”, explains the artist.

For the new Xingu Collection, process could not be different; however, it had unusual circumstances in its development. The collection arose from the encounter between Maria Fernanda and the Mehinako ethnicity, located in the Kaupüna village, in Upper Xingu, south of Amazon Forest, at the end of last year. “Xingu is born from an encounter between past and future, but is established in the present, proposing new ways of looking at tradition, with the respect and admiration that it deserves, while using technology to maintain communication in times of isolation”, says Maria Fernanda, who, due to new practices since the beginning of pandemic in the world, was unable to return to Kaupüna village to continue the studies and production process.

This unprecedented protocol in the dynamics made Maria Fernanda find new ways of interacting with the village artisans. The weaving techniques classes that she would have in loco were transformed into recorded videos and sent over the internet; with the help of Kulikyrda Mehinako, an artist and one of the community representatives, Maria Fernanda developed a new color chart, extracted from leaves and barks of native trees found in the reserve, with the aim of rescuing the full potential of Xingu, counting on Maibe Maroccolo, in Brasília, to extract these shades and make dye pigments to color the cotton threads used on the mats produced by the Kaupüna village’s women.

“This project has a special taste, as persistence and creativity united Yankatu and the Kaupüna village in its development, despite the obstacles imposed by reality. The yarns dyed by Mattricaria with the raw material harvested by Kulikyrda arrived here and there and, even at a distance, Mehinako women and I were together weaving a new story: they produce a mat with buriti in the village, and I, in São Paulo, learn from them and also weave a mat with small Cabreuva wood cylinders”, comments Maria Fernanda.

To develop the pieces of the collection, Maria Fernanda was inspired by the objects and everyday elements of Mehinako people.