Awavena – Lynette Wallworth
From Emmy Award-winning director Lynette Wallworth and the Amazonian Yawanawa people, Awavena is a stunning tale of metamorphosis told through cutting edge XR technology.
For the Amazonian Yawanawa people, ‘medicine’ has the power to take you inside a vision to a place you have never been. By working with Australian artist Lynette Wallworth, Hushahu, the first woman shaman of the Yawanawa is able to use VR technology to open a portal to another way of knowing.
Using technology that the Yawanawa feel enables them to share their story and visions, this immersive work takes you on a virtual journey into the spirit world, capturing fluorescent specimens from the forest world to create a vivid, luminous vision.
“Awavena is a true story with all the power of myth. It tells the story of Hushahu, the first woman Shaman of the Yawanawa, and of the radical reconfiguring of gender relations that takes place following her induction, by the tribe’s spiritual leader Tata, into the Yawanawa spiritual traditions.”
Lynette Wallworth
Awavena is a collaboration between an artist and a community, melding technology and transcendent experience so that a vision can be shared, and a story told of a people ascending from the edge of extinction. It is an unmissable experience and a gift from the Yawanawa at a time of peril for their people. They hope our experience of Awavena will shift our consciousness and change the way we perceive the world and the decisions we make.
Daily screenings of featured production images and interviews at 11am, Perth Cultural Centre Screen.