The artist FLuX describes his work as ‘Trompe Nouveau’, a style and technique that combines hyper-realistic oil painting with the ornamentation of Art Nouveau. It makes for a mildly disconcerting effect, the realism of his figures and faces contrasting with the choice of pigments filling out their contours. It may be the reason why David Good chose FLuX to help tell his story though, given its own unreal quality.
Good’s father, a student at Pennsylvania State University, visited the Amazon in 1975 to study the protein intake of the Yanomami—one of the last Indigenous people in the region. He spent over a decade there, fell in love with a woman called Yarima, and returned with her to America where they had children. She couldn’t manage life in a foreign country and eventually left for the forest, leaving David behind. It was a move that cast a dark cloud over his childhood, leaving him with a yearning to discover what he had lost, and why. When he turned 22, he decided to go the Amazon and find her, while attempting to reconnect with his Yanomami heritage.
Speaking about the best way to tell David’s undeniably compelling story, FLuX said in a recent interview that he was inspired by Wim Wenders’ film Wings of Desire, which switches from black and white to colour at a particular moment of truth. He compares it to what David must have felt while growing up in suburban America, until he returned to his mother’s people and understood why she had left.
In keeping with this premise of an ‘origin story’, the book opens with David’s comparisons between his own life and the lives of misunderstood superheroes. He speaks of his early years of isolation, and the impact of losing a parent. When the panels eventually burst into colourful life, they do so for the Yanomami, celebrating their mythology rooted in the natural world, at distinct odds with the empty materialism of the West. It makes for a moving biography that also functions as a lesson in anthropology.
Another thing that makes this interesting is the implications of Good’s personal history for humanity. Now a PhD candidate in microbiology at the University of Guelph, his research focuses on the Yanomami gut microbiome, supposedly the world’s most diverse, and the clues it might hold to better health.
Good blends the personal with the political without being preachy. It is the kind of approach that informs and educates, in the best manner possible. There is a lot of information about the Yanomami, and even the art reflects their cosmology and belief in the interconnectedness of all living things. Does it reward repeat readings? Not particularly, but it does spur one to look up more information on an otherwise ignored part of the world.
Yanomami territories have reportedly been devastated by sustained Western contact in recent decades. For that reason alone, this book ought to be read and shared. Not enough attention is being paid to how vulnerable communities are succumbing to unrestrained capitalism. Good reminds us that the protection of these people is vital not just for their own future, but for ours as well.
David Good & FLuX (W), FLuX (A) • NBM Publishing, $24.99
Review by Lindsay Pereira
