Claudia Andujar. La Lutte Yanomami at Fondation Cartier

In 2019, the Fondation Cartier in Paris hosted the exhibition Claudia Andujar. La Lutte Yanomami, showing the work of the renowned photographer and activist. Famous worldwide for her devotion to the Yanomami, one of the largest indigenous group of Brazil, Claudia Andujar has spent fifty years of her life documenting and fighting for the preservation of the Yanomami people and their culture.

Pursuing their collaboration with the museum, design studio deValence was in charge of the visual identity of the exhibition. It’s characterized by the use of Mars Condensed from Production Type, which is present in all media to catch the eye. In fact, the vertical lines of the condensed typeface appear almost as stripes, contrasting on the posters with the bright-colored homogenous photographs. The letters somehow evoke the verticality of the Amazon forest in which the Yanomami live, an impression that’s reinforced by the exhibition’s scenography, with the walls painted in green. However, the effect of Mars Condensed on the viewer is not one of natural serenity: It rather is imposant, visible, urgent – very much like the recognition the Yanomami have been fighting for, for so long. Through the use of Mars Condensed, deValence succeeded in visually transmitting the dedication of Claudia Andujar to her cause.

Mars Condensed is paired with Borges, a typeface family by the Latin American foundry PampaType and named after Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges.