Common Thread

Common Thread, Interview with Olinda Silvano (2021).

Process

Community of Cantagallo

Artists

Olinda Silvano and Non Shinabo, a collective of artisan mothers from the Shipiba community of Cantagallo in Lima, Peru.

Salomé Buenapico Silvano _ Soraida Cumapa _ Doris Gómez _ Dora Inuma _ Wilma Maynas _ Cecilia Meléndez _ Edelmira Mori _ Fenicia Betsabé Mori _ Juana Nunta (Tita Rona) _ Karina Pacaya _ Claudia Pacaya _ Rosa Pinedo (Miluska) _ Delia Pizarro _ Metsa Rama _ Juana Reátegui _ Betty Reátegui Cruz _ Silvia Ricopa _ Michita Sampayo _ Cordelia Sánchez _ Olinda Silvano _ Lucy Silvano _ Sadith Silvano _ Jessica Silvano (Nete Bena) _ Zaida Silvano _ Nelda Silvano _ Inés Sinuiri _ Isolina Tananta _ Emilia Teco _ Priscila Vásquez _ Dely Zabaleta

Cantagallo is a settlement currently occupied by a large number of families of the Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous peoples of the Amazon who came to Lima in the late 1990s. Cantagallo is located on top of a landfill next to the Rímac River, in the center of Lima. It was founded in 2000 and became an association the following year. Since then, the Shipibo people have created an important urban community, originally started by dozens of families and now comprising more than 3000 people. Over the course of those two decades, they have vindicated their right to live as Indigenous people in Lima, a racist and hostile city. Thanks to the efforts of the Shipibo people and several collaborations, they have managed to establish a bilingual intercultural educational school, they have extended their culture through painting, design, textiles, literature, theater, music, and public art, and they have become the country’s most recognized Amazonian Indigenous settlement with a major impact on the public sphere. Non Shinanbo (“Our Inspirations”) is an association of mother artisans of the Shipibo community of Cantagallo.

Olinda Silvano Inuma – Reshijabe (b. 1969) is an Amazonian Shipibo activist and artist. Her Shupubo name Reshijabe means “the first breath.” During her adolescence, she left her community, Paoyhan, and moved to the city of Pucallpa where she worked as a domestic worker. It was through that experience that Silvano learned Spanish, and she later moved to Lima where she worked as a street vendor selling artistic and artisan objects. In the capital city, she participated in different courses and trainings through which she perfected her art. She is was one of the founders of the Shipibo community in Cantagallo in 2000 and is one of its most active leaders. Through her work as a promoter, she has managed to encourage the work of hundreds of artist and artisan women who transmit Shipibo experience and tradition through weaving, painting, literature, song, and forms of public art and murals. She has been recognized by the Congress of the Republic of Peru, the Women’s Ministry, the National University of San Marcos, and others for her artistic work and her struggle for the rights of women and the Shipibo community. In 2021 she received a special mention from the National Literature Prize, in the category of Children’s and Youth Literature for the book “El día que la abuela me regaló los colores kenè” [“The Day that my Grandmother Gave Me the Kenè Colors”) illustrated by Silvano and written by Julio Vega.

Kené design is one of the manifestations of the ancestral culture of the Shipibo-Konibo people, which was recognized as cultural patrimony of Peru in 2008. Kené is expressed through geometric designs and patterns used in textile art, ceramics, body painting, and other forms that go beyond what is understood by the western category of “art.” Kené not only synthesizes an aesthetic and scientific knowledge, but also narrates the origins of the Shipibo-Konibo people. The transmission of kené occurs through relations between grandmothers and mothers, as well as encounters with sacred plants of the Amazonian world, such as ayahuasca or piripiri, which activate spiritual visuals and new forms of knowledge. According to Olinda Silvano, “kené synthesizes a vision of the world, of the community’s aesthetic and wisdom, its traditions and roots through time. It is also a source of information about our origins and the close bonds between our people and our lands.” Ayahuasca is a drink used by many Indigenous peoples of the Amazons in the territory now known as Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. For the Shipibo-Konibo people, ayahuasca induces the vision of energy patterns and geometric designs that gives rise to kené. The plant is shaped like a tangled rope or cord that they identify with Ronin, the cosmic serpent – the primordial being –, in whose skin (the serpent’s skin) all the potential designs of the universe can be seen.

Centro Amazónico de Antropología y Aplicación Práctica [Amazonian Center of Anthropology and Practical Application]

Sandra Serrano Finetti, textile researcher and clothing designer

Gala Berger, Curatorial Associate

Curatorial Statement

This project is based on a collaboration between the artist and activist Olinda Silvano and the Non Shinanbo (“Our Inspirations”) group of artisan mothers of the Shipibo community in Cantagallo in Lima, Peru. Located along the Rímac River, this community is comprised of a large Shipibo-Konibo migrant community that has been fighting for its right to live in the city as Indigenous people. Through her work as a promoter and activist leader, Olinda has encouraged many women artists and artisans to transmit the Shipibo heritage through paintings, weavings, drawings, and songs.

In April 2021, conversations began between Olinda and the Non Shinanbo collective to invite them to elaborate a series of works sharing their experience during the health, social, and political crisis that Peru and the world were going through. The community of Cantagallo was severely affected at the beginning of the pandemic, when little was known about the virus. In a context in which many Indigenous populations were left – and still are today – without adequate intercultural medical care, it was the mutual care, community accompaniment, and the use of medicinal plants – matico, ginger, mucura, wild garlic, among others – that allowed them to make it through the emergency situation.

Through dialogue with Olinda, 29 members of Non Shinanbo who currently reside in Lima and Pucallpa were invited. Each of the women has been developing different pieces that make up textile and pictorial testimonies of the current moment. The work of producing the pieces started in September 2021 and has continued to today (January 2022). It includes the production of nearly one hundred works of different sizes and materials, including paintings on bark and canvas, embroidery, textiles, and objects. These works address the community’s experience, the wisdom transmitted by plants, the powers of Ronin (the primordial serpent), maternity, collective work, the memories of communities in the Amazon, the owners (guardian elements of nature), migration, the impact of COVID-19 in urban and Indigenous areas, their way of inhabiting public space, oral memory, and reciprocity, among other aspects that document the current struggles of the Shipibo-Konibo people and how they have developed an important political voice and agency.

This collaboration sought to contribute to improving the infrastructure and working conditions of Non Shinanbo and their community, to strengthen their processes of internal social organization, and to construct new bridges for conversation between the women creators and the public sphere. In practical terms, this has meant generating a dynamic of mutual listening and co-responsibility in decision-making processes and the use of the general production budget. Thus, the budget has not only served for paying honorarium to all the participants, but also for acquiring work materials (tables, chairs, awnings, brushes, canvasses, paint, wool, among others), technology and equipment (overlockers, video and photography equipment, among others), generating educational dynamics (workshops about how to use the machines and textile improvement), and buying goods for the collective benefit of the community (water tanks, accessories, among others).

In turn, a series of lines and concepts emerged that have served to connect different components of the project as a whole, including the INSITE Journal, dedicated to the project, Viewpoints, and the public conversations. These range from notions such as collectivity, weaving and healing, present in their practice in different ways, to aspects associated with migration, tensions with the nation-state model, or the ways in which the geometric forms of kenè reveal multiple horizons of affective and social meaning. This set of images and processes allows us to approach the recent global crisis from situated places that clearly show that the pandemic is not only a health emergency, but a crisis of environmental justice and the planet’s sustainability.

Miguel A. López