José Tarisson Costa da Silva Nawa

Biography

Tarisson has been working as a Communications Advisor for various indigenous organisations in the Brazilian Amazon for four years. Currently, he is working as a journalist at the Federal Public Defender’s Office, a public body that defends the rights of indigenous peoples. Tarisson is also a member of the Brazilian Articulation of Indigenous Anthropologists, the main indigenous anthropology network in Brazil, where he writes reports about indigenous peoples covering a variety of themes.

In addition to his journalism work, Tarisson works as a curator of ethnographic pieces at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as a collaborator in dialogue with indigenous leaders to collect and rescue pieces donated by indigenous peoples. He reflects, together with researchers, on appropriate approaches to collecting ethnographic pieces.

Tarisson is also in the process of writing a book as a result of his master’s degree at the National Museum, in which he discusses the living memories of the Nawa people.

Tarisson is interested in the relationship between museums and communications, especially in working with media outlets and the press, and was interested to explore the British Museum’s approach to making its offering visible to local and national audiences. He was also interested in the museum’s use of audiovisual documentation, which he hoped will be a source of inspiration for his own processes of documenting ethnographic pieces.

At the British Museum

During his time at the British Museum, Tarisson was based in the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas and his UK partner placement was spent at Manchester Museum, Manchester Art Gallery and Whitworth Art Gallery.

Tarisson’s participation on the International Training Programme was generously supported by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust.