National Museum of the American Indian
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Artists

Moira Pernambuco

is an environmental, street, and studio portrait photographer living in Brooklyn, New York. She is African and Amerindian (Wapishana of southern Guyana and northern Brazil). Born in Guyana, she moved with her family to New York at the age of 10. She went on to earn a BA from SUNY–Purchase College and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Pernambuco’s photography is in private collections as well as the collections of the Caribbean Cultural Center in New York City, Columbia University’s School of Social Work, the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center, and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others. In addition to these institutions, her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum.
A close-up photograph of a face is overlaid with semi-transparent images of several people and a map
Photo by Moira Pernambuco
Interview with Moira Pernambuco [13:28 min]

The National Museum of the American Indian thanks the Frye Museum and the yəhaw̓ Indigenous Creatives Collective for their research assistance.

This project received support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative.

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