ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which India and Brazil have become the locus of enunciation for a pan-indigenous feminist environmental movement that connects colonial legacies of violence against women as violence against mother earth; reclaiming public space thus brings to bear on two spatial projects of liberation. It centers on the art, writing, and activism of Shilo Shiv Suleman, a contemporary artist based in Bangalore who has quickly gained international acclaim for her work, which ranges from giant installations at Burning Man to TED talks to founding the Fearless Collective. With their community-based art, this group of visual artists denounces rape culture and gender violence and has created safe spaces across the Global South, including a collaborative project with the indigenous women’s group Pelas Mulheres on the coast of Bahia, Brazil. The binational collaboration sought to use art to reclaim a Tupinamba indigenous ancestral graveyard. By analyzing the Fearless Collective’s aesthetic reclamation of Tupinamba territory as well as Fearless Futures: A Feminist Cartographer’s Toolkit, a 56-page open-source manual that emerged from their work in Brazil, this chapter sheds light on the power of street art and participative ritual to undo centuries of injustice against both women and environment.
