In September 2018, recording experts from Factum Foundation travelled to Kamukuwaká to carry out the digitisation of the listed cave, as part of a new approach to conservation in collaboration with the Wauja community. Also collaborating with an independent team of Brazilian anthropologists, it aimed to document the site using high-resolution 3D-imaging technologies, including laser-scanning and photogrammetry: precautionary measures intended to safeguard against precisely such a disastrous event.
Upon arrival at the site, it was revealed to have been devastated with the most important petroglyphs hacked away. In spite of this, Factum Foundation’s team recorded the site in its vandalised condition. This data will be used in combination with photographic documentation dating from before the attack to produce an accurate 3D restoration of the cave that will be displayed at the garden of the Knights of Malta, coinciding with the 2019 Venice Biennale of Art.
It is hoped that this artistic and technological statement will have a real world impact, by gathering support for the Wauja with what they believe to be the only way to safeguard Kamukuwaká: to reclaim it and its surroundings as indigenous lands and reinstate a village nearby.
A film by © Óscar Parasiego for Factum Foundation
