In February 2014, the Brazilian Post Office printed 600,000 stamps dedicated to the World Cup. Within days, all 600,000 had sold out, both online and in stores.

 

Near the Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro — where most of the 2014 World Cup matches were played — stands the Antigo Museu do Índio, the country's only site dedicated to Indigenous culture, occupied by various Indigenous communities for years. In March 2013, after months of struggle, these communities were violently removed from the museum by the military police, to make way for a complex of restaurants, parking lots and shops selling World Cup merchandise.

 

Following the end of the World Cup, the Antigo Museu do Índio escaped demolition — but it remains barricaded and under government control, with Indigenous communities denied any right of access to the site.

 

This work interrogates the gap between the images a country produces when representing itself — the postcards used here were widely distributed in the 1970s and 1980s to showcase Brazil's cultural diversity — and its actions.

 

It was also made in support of Brazilian Indigenous peoples, with the aim of bringing to light an event that occurred in the shadow of an international spectacle watched by eyes across the world.