CHONON BENSHO
“Since I was a little girl, my grandmothers treated me with plants so that I could one day expand my knowledge of embroidery. It was our duty to do our own embroidery, and my mother would tell us: If you are going to do this, you have to do it well, because it shows the spirit we carry within us. It is something that no one can see, but it is inside us. It was also very important for me to know myself and to give space to my grandparents because they respected trees, water, the earth, and the sun very much. Knowing that is the most beautiful thing. Maybe other people aren't interested in it, but I am. Showing beauty because that's where all this knowledge comes from. It's the essence that we can show through ourselves. The few people who approached me [at the exhibition] told me that they felt calm and peaceful [when they saw my work].” Chono Bensho - Interview with MUCEN _ Red de Museos del Banco Central
CELIA VASQUEZ YUI
Celia Vasquez Yui is an artist, indigenous rights activist and political representative of the Shipibo People of Peru. Born in 1960, as a young girl she began creating alongside her mother, an eminent ceramicist and descendant of the polychrome horizon cultures, whose artistic record throughout the Amazon dates backs thousands of years. In Celia’s discipline, the ecosystem along with the supernatural, ritual, aesthetic, and social mores are melded into a powerful, multifaceted cultural whole. The artist conceives and carries out her work as shaman, preparing ritually for several days, much like a healer would do, by fasting, abstaining from sex and specific foods, chanting and blowing tobacco to propitiate the firing. She incorporates the repetitive patterns of the Shipibo on her figurative hand-formed animal sculptures and vases. These zoomorphic sculptures allude to a spiritual understanding of ecology, according to which the compilation of a bestiary is not just a compendium of endangered animals, but also an invocation of their spirits, a call for them to come and hold space, and a lament against their vanishing. (Text: shipiboconibo.org)
ELENA VALERA_ BAWAN JISBË
“When I paint, I feel that I am present within my own world, it’s as if I am feeling myself. (…) I like for them to know about my people, about who they are, and the place we inhabit, over there, in the jungle. (…) The plants have their own power, so you feel another type of air, another force. That is what I want to share in my painting, to make them feel how I feel in that moment.” Elena Valera - Interview with AwareWomenArtists by Miguel Lopez. Further M. Lopez writes: ‘E. Valera was part of one of the 14 founding families of Cantagallo, a Shipibo-Konibo community that settled on a vacant lot on the banks of the Rimac river in 2000, a few blocks from Lima’s historic centre. [..]Today, Cantagallo is the largest indigenous urban settlement in Peru, and, despite having become a leading public voice, the residents are still struggling to acquire land titles and access to basic services such as water and sewage. Many of E. Valera’s paintings from those years narrate the difficulties of migration the Shipibo community faced, the racism and discrimination in Lima, and the ways in which her community fought to maintain their roots and traditions in the city.'
HARRY PINEDO _ININ METSA
‘Harry Pinedo (born 1988) is a teacher and visual artist. He lives in Lima. His indigenous Shipibo name is Inin Metsa (Fragrant Leaves). He earned a bachelor's degree in Educacion Intercultural Bilingue (Intercultural Bilingual Education) from the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. Like his parents, Elena Valera (Bahuan Jisbe) and Roldán Pinedo (Shoyan Shëca), Harry Pinedo has devoted himself to painting since graduating from secondary school. Pinedo presents his paintings annually at the Ministry of Culture's folk art fair, Rurak maki. Since 2010, he has participated in collective and solo exhibitions, including MIRA! - Artes Visuales Contemporáneas de los Pueblos Indígenas in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 2013, El esplendor de Yanapuma at the Centro Colich de Barranco in Lima in 2017, and New Generation at the Maggy Stein Gallery in Luxembourg in 2022.’ (Text: Weltkulturenmuseum.de)
REMBER YAHUARCANI
"Contemporary art gives us indigenous peoples the opportunity to speak for ourselves. Art gives [indigenous peoples] a special status that no other field in the contemporary world—the modern world—has given them. Anthropology, for example, treated indigenous peoples as objects of study. And history treated us as stagnant societies. Then contemporary art came along and gave us the opportunity to speak for ourselves." (Remember Yahuarcani in an interview with ‘Arte en Diálogo - 2025’) Biennale Portrait by Miguel López 2024: 'Rember Yahuarcani is a painter, writer, curator, and activist who belongs to the Aimeni clan (the White Heron clan) of the Uitoto Nation of northern Amazonia in Peru. Yahuarcani’s paintings draw on the narratives of the Uitoto mythology and Western art traditions and techniques. Since 2003, his artistic vocabulary has moved from a descriptive style found in his early paintings to the creation of large-scale lyrical, oneiric landscapes like the one included in the Biennale Arte. Through delicate traces and bright colours, Yahuarcani presents scenes that invite us to immerse ourselves in Uitoto thinking, storytelling, and daily life in order to see and feel the world from a different belief system. The animals, plants, spirits, humans, and other beings of the Amazon rainforest that populate his paintings are depicted as molecularly connected to each other; the artist reclaims them as sources of wisdom. Yahuarcani paints his multiple characters perpetually in motion as if they were escaping from the identities and narratives imposed by the state and the Western world. This is the first time the work of Rember Yahuarcani is presented at Biennale Arte.'
BRUS RUBIO CHURAY
'Introduced to the arts by his father, himself a painter and an indigenous community leader, Rubio shed light on the mythology, history and culture of the Murui. Rubio’s art practice like that of his father is deeply connected to his educational and environmental work in his community. A self-taught painter, he began to paint on llanchama (tree bark) with natural dyes. Later Brus built a workshop and a painting studio on the banks of the Ampiyacu River where he worked and gave classes to children in order to preserve the traditional knowledge of his community.' (Text: Sapar Contemporary Art Gallery)
DARWIN RODRIGUEZ TORRES
'Darwin Rodríguez is an artist from the native community of Brillo Nuevo, belonging to the Bora indigenous people, located on the banks of the Yaguasyacu River in Loreto. The themes of his works refer to his worldview and ancestral knowledge related to the Amazon rainforest.' (Text: Ruraq Maki)
LUIS BELTRAN PACAYA MANIHUARI
'With his art he began to discover the value of his culture and understood the importance in protecting the plants and animals as did his ancestors. The Ayahuasca medicine and his art has became hand in hand as he paints them daily, a cosmovision of the Amazon and the medicinal plants.' (Text: Contemporary Arts Americas)
VICTOR CHURAY _1972-2002
“Víctor Churay was the one who started this journey, opening the door for people to realize that there is an indigenous art that must be shown... governments have always forgotten us, we have to show ourselves in some way. It is like a cry from the forest: Listen to us, we are here, we exist, look at us, this is what we do” (Iginio Capino - Bora painter)
ROBERTO RENGIFO _CHONO MËNI _1981-2019
'In a more civilized country, with a more sensitive and humane government, Robert Rengifo should have deserved decent care and a dignified life, free from worries, dedicated to painting beautifully, as he had done since discovering the magic of drawing and painting.' Obituary by Servindi.org
GERARDO PETSAIN
“My name is Gerardo Petsain Sharup. I was born April 12, 1963. I am from the Wampis people of the Amazon region, Peru. I studied higher education and I have been a bilingual teacher in the Condorcanqui/Amazonas area for 20 years. At the same time, I have another specialty, which is art. [..] I keep working on my art because I like to paint about my culture. Within our traditional custom we are indigenous, we are called Awajun Wampis and we live in the countryside. We have another way of living, for example, in our community we all have a minga together and we all have lunch together. We celebrate parties all together, we approve everything together. We share our free resources to make our homes, we farm, make baskets, canoes, spears, etc. all in a healthy environment where there are no robberies or killings. Free without worry we walk anywhere. On the other hand, in the city all alert, worried, to rob us they kill us, fights in politics, permanent movement, with constant fright, etc.I appreciate and love my culture and I feel that my drawings allow me to directly teach my culture and much more. Although little by little the new generations are leaving our traditions behind. Now, as the national education system dominates, we are managing two cultures, mestizo and indigenous, but we choose good things from both, in the best of cases it goes well and we walk well.”
WILBERTO CASANTO
'Wilberto shares with his and future generations the challenge of continuing to be an Asháninka in a world that is diverse, increasingly closer, where the presence of the other makes sharing increasingly necessary, as is recognizing the knowledge and rights of each people and culture on an equal footing.' Javier Macera Curator of his Wilberto Casantos exposition 'Words and Images'
ENRIQUE CASANTO
'Self-taught painter belonging to the orchid clan of the Ashaninka people of the central jungle. From a very young age, he devoted himself to researching and preserving the oral history of his people. The characters, beings, and entities that form part of his visual imagination reveal his extensive knowledge of historical, medicinal, and culinary topics related to Ashaninka culture, which he has disseminated through exhibitions, books, and teaching. He is an official translator and interpreter of the Ashaninka language. He graduated from the Faculty of Engineering at the Universidad Peruana Unión and holds a diploma in University Teaching from the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo. Since 2000, he has been working as a researcher on Amazonian topics at the Seminar on Andean Rural History at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.' (Text: Contemporary Arts Américas)
PECON QUENA_ LASTENIA CANAYO
'Lastenia Canayo, also known as Pecon Quena in the Shipibo-Konibo language, was born in 1962 and raised in the native community of Roroboya, on the banks of the lower Ucayali River. Her name in the Shipibo language means 'the one who calls the colors', and refers to her artistic skills for the painting, textiles and ceramics she produces. She currently lives and works from her home in Pucallpa with her children and close family.' (Text: Xapiriground.org)
NEREYDA LOPEZ
'Nereyda López is a self-taught sculptor of Tikuna and Kukama ancestry. She works with natural fibres and wood, materials entirely taken from the forest, to represent many of the characters portrayed in the myths and tales her forefathers told her. Her installations allow the viewer to physically enter into the Amazon mythological world. Descendant of almost nomadic people from the Amazon basin, Nereyda still remembers the stories of his great-grandfather, a sorcerer of the Tikuna people, to which she gives life through her work.' Text: Toronto Biennale
PATRICIA RENGIFO
'Patricia Rengifo was raised by her grandfather, a master healer, and her grandmother, an experienced ceramist, in the Nuevo San Juan community. She learned to paint by helping her father Roberto Rengifo, whose works were inspired by the Shipibo Konibo stories, legends and myths of the Amazon.' (Text: ecoexpo.ces.uc.pt/)
PESIN KATE _ CORDELIA SANCHEZ
"I did an artwork both about what Western Medicine is and what traditional medicine is - what plants are. [..] We Shipibos not only use everything that is traditional medicine but also western medicine. When I got sick with Covid, I had to use both medicines [..] and that way I was cured [..] because if you use only one it doesn’t work [..] we have to use both so we can heal faster. One of the artworks I did is about a mother embroidering masks, because in times of covid [..] [mothers] began to embroider masks in oder to sell and buy their medicine and food in order to survive. And that’s how I did my artwork of what we have been through in these very difficult times. I am from the Shipibo-Culture. Our custom is that, since we are little our mother has to teach us everything from embroidery painting and also the bracelets and necklaces we make in order to meet our needs. [..] That’s how we have learned to make art, and also through plants and everything that is the cosmovision.“ (interview with insiteart.org)
OLINDA RESHINJABE SILVANO
“I would say to Indigenous women that we, as Indigenous people, are strong. We are powerful because we have our traditions and our ancestral memory. Keep fighting so that others will follow our steps. We have to be more united, giving visibility to our identity, our people, our culture, and the living culture of Indigenous people.” Olinda Silvano, Shipibo-Konibo Artist in interview with the power plant.org
