Special Project

This project brings together a group of paintings by Indigenous artists from the Shipibo-konibo community, located in the Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon. This group of creators currently resides in Cantagallo, the largest urban Indigenous community in Peru, in the city of Lima. They belong to different generations, and since the late 20th century, they have created artworks on canvas and cloth, and later in other formats such as murals and installations. Their artistic proposals have transformed contemporary perspectives on the arts within the Peruvian and Latin American context. Beginning in the late 20th century, their work focused on the investigation and representation of Amazonian flora and fauna, as well as the mythical and spiritual beings that inhabit the Amazon rainforest. Today, for these artists, painting serves as a way to assert their identities as contemporary artists, defend other forms of knowledge, and advocate for alternative ways of living in balance in cities and forests in order to recover and transform the history, memory, and mythology of their peoples.
In their paintings, the Shipibo-konibo artists integrate community knowledge about the relationships and exchanges between humans and spiritual beings, as well as the wisdom surrounding the geometric designs of kené and its history. These patterns refer to the encounters between plants, humans, animals, and their relationships in balance with rivers, forests, and their protective spirits. Furthermore, in their works, the artists transform traditional knowledge and update it to reflect their experiences of migration, critique global environmental issues, the devastation of the Amazon, and the need to protect Amazonian ecosystems.
Participating artists: Harry Pinedo Inin Metsa, Roldán Pinedo Shoyan Shëca, Cordelia Sánchez Pesin Kate, Jessica Silvano, Soi Noma Collective, and Elena Valera Bawan Jisbe.
Logos: Galería del Paseo, Tornasol