How do we become sky lifters? According to the indigenous Yanomami cosmology, two worlds before this world have ended with the falling of the sky. I argue that this world, on the brink of environmental devastation, needs to learn from practices and practitioners that have long dealt with nature in a form that “The Understanding” (Ferreira da Silva 2016) continuously tries to destroy. In conversation with decolonial theorists from the Global South and the “doings” (Muñoz 2009) of artists from Brazil, my interest lies in revealing practices that act beyond the binaries of human and nature and form altogether an “ecology of practices.” (Stengers 2005) The premise of my investigation departs from the indigenous cosmology mentioned with the intention to look for examples that would serve as sky lifters, e.g. artistic practices that enact other ways of being in and with nature, together with my own practice as a research-based artist and curator.

One significant example of an artist and activist that emphasizes my argument is Abdias Nascimento (1914-2011). His political, performative and artistic practices from the 1940's to the 1980's not only set the ground to deviant non-white artists to flourish in the cultural scene but was and is essential to a process of emancipation in the building of different realities.

By invoking more-than-human perspectives and indigenous cosmovisions, my goal is that these anti-hegemonic artistic doings would not only bring to the surface the constant fight against racial and gender subjugation of people of color and indigenous peoples in Latin America, but share possibilities of moving towards a “world of many worlds” – as defended by the Zapatistas – having art practice as the central medium of being and fabulating about worlds otherwise.