Erika Oserotaki is an artist from the Matsigenka community of Palotoa Teparo, in the Manu Biosphere Reserve of the Peruvian Amazon.¹ She and other artists from her community are part of a project² that promotes the development of traditional weaving and spinning using natural fibers and that seeks to increase the recognition of the artistic practices of the Matsigenka people. Erika holds onto a Shipibo- Konibo embroidery—a circular piece of cloth —that she bought from an artist from that community when she participated in a workshop she led in another area of Manu. The work, made up of interconnected and overlapping lines, is one of the starting points of the Palotoa Teparo collective’s initiative. They feel inspired by the work of the women creators of the Shipibo- Konibo people and take them as an example. Today they are working to place their works of art into the commercial circuits of traditional art in Peru and also so that their people are recognized for their artistic labor in other spaces of creation.

            Shipibo-Konibo artists—such as Olinda Silvano, Lastenia Canayo, and Sara Flores—are currently being recognized for their artistic work and their role as activists in their towns and communities. This recognition comes from within the Peruvian Amazon itself, from other Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, and also from national and international spheres. Their creations use different materials and techniques, such as ceramics, embroidery, textiles, and paint—whether with natural dyes, acrylics, or other materials. The works of this group of women creators stand out due to their contributions to traditional arts, as well as their participation in contemporary art circuits at the local and global level. Furthermore, the artists of this community participate in training and education programs for other peoples of the Peruvian Amazon and are taken as a model for developing a creative tradition that is valued and recognized.

            Elena Valera (Bawan Jisbe) (Iparía, Ucayali, 1963), a Shipibo- Konibo artist, participated, along with other Indigenous artists, in a group of exhibitions that took place in Lima in that late 1990s. These exhibitions brought together works made with natural dyes— some on natural fibers such as llanchama—and other materials, that represented Amazonian flora and fauna, as well as the customs and modes of life of the peoples of this region. The works included traditional elements, such as the kené of the Shipibo-Konibo people, as well as words or phrases in Indigenous languages that describe, in a precise way, what is represented. In contrast, a few decades later, the artist Chonon Bensho (Santa Clara de Yarinacocha, Ucayali, 1992) developed a series of embroideries and paintings affirming the search for balance and interconnection among the diverse elements that coexist in the Amazon’s ecosystems and the world in general, such as plants, animals, and humans. Bensho’s work starts from the need to propose new ways of understanding our relations with the territory and other beings in the context of the global environmental crisis. Her approach is based on knowledge of healing through master plants, the protector spirits of plants and animals, and the wisdom of contemporary Amazonian mythology.

            Both artists, in different periods of work, develop their proposals based on their knowledge of their family tradition—the wisdom of their grandparents—representing elements of flora and fauna to propose going beyond the Western understanding of the landscape, memory, and knowledge. This affirms the need to recognize ourselves as part of the territory that we inhabit and its cycles and processes. In their works, it is possible to analyze the changes in the presence and role of kené, as well as its diverse techniques and means of composition.

            Archaeological research carried out over the last decades has found ceramic material created by Shipibo-Konibo people between 1300 and 1500 AD in the archaeological site El Zapotal in the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve,³ today the territory of the Kukama Kukamiria people. In one of the objects found, apparently a large polychromed plate, it is possible to recognize representations of the “great mythical serpent, owner of the universe in Amazonian cultures.”⁴ It is Ronin, the serpent whose body contains all the kené, the geometric designs painted by this community.

            The Shipibo-Konibo term kené means “design” and its plural is kenebo. Peruvian anthropologist and researcher Luisa Elvira Belaunde explains that “the word is used to designate the geometric patterns made by hand on a variety of surfaces such as people’s face and skins, outer walls of ceramics, and the fabric used in clothing, accessories, and blankets.”⁵ The activity of creating kené, whether in painting, embroidery, or weaving, “is a typically feminine art, taught by mother to daughter, using varied materials [...] It is in great demand in the growing Amazonian tourist market and provides women with a considerable degree of economic independence over their husbands.”⁶ Moreover, for the Peruvian artist Christian Bendayán, “the origins of these designs are uncertain and their meanings enigmatic, but it is undoubtedly a way of writing memory and it demonstrates the deepest manifestation of their identity, spirituality, creativity, and sophisticated artistic sensibility.⁷ The kené designs are part of pictorial compositions, embroideries, and ceramic creations of the artists of the Shipibo-Konibo community, which, over the last two decades, have undergone transformations in their research and creation processes. In recent years, this kené has become a pattern that accounts for the interconnection between diverse natural, human, and nonhuman elements and that enables artists to emphasize the need to recognize the value of community knowledges and to rethink contemporary modes of life.

        At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, Amazonian Indigenous artists started increasingly to participate and be recognized in Lima’s art spaces. In particular, Shipibo-Konibo, Huitoto, Bora, and Ashaninka painters, with the support of different institutions and managers, produced pictorial representations that were later included in different exhibitions.⁸ These artists’ paintings were characterized by containing a “narrative composition [...], representing spiritual beings and scenes and, at the same time, through figures, recounting stories or explaining aspects of cosmovisions and shamanic visionary states.”⁹ These works can be understood as a vindication of the Indigenous voice against the Western tradition of representation of the Amazonian territory— for example, in botanical studies, pictorial landscapes, and photographs made by travelers, European researchers, and later by the Amazonian cultural elite in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although in some cases they maintain features and structures of Western representation—such as the study of elements of flora and fauna or landscapes that emphasize the vastness of the territory in relation to the beings that inhabit it—these paintings reaffirm the value of the knowledge of the Indigenous peoples to which they belong. They do so by including terms in Indigenous languages, stories originating from the collective oral tradition, and representation of what is currently identified as the cosmovision of their communities: the spaces of the water beings, earth, heavens, divinities, and protector spirits. Furthermore, they integrate the rhythms and vibrations of the healing ceremonies with ayahuasca medicine or the spaces for sharing and preserving knowledges that come from grandparents, such as the maloca.¹⁰

            It is in this context, in which Amazonian Indigenous creators painted to share their people’s knowledge, that the work of Shipibo-Konibo artist Elena Valera emerges. Between 1998 and 1999, she was accompanied and supported by the Andean Rural History Seminar (SHRA)¹¹ and was part of the process of the development of what Pablo Macera identifies as “a new pictorial style in Peru.”¹² According to Macera, this was the time of the introduction of a form of Indigenous painting, the result of intercultural dialogue, that critiqued the hierarchies between what was identified and differentiated as “academic art” and “popular art.”

            Elena learned the work of painting, embroidery, and ceramic primarily from her grandmother’s teachings and, to a lesser extent, from other family members. Her knowledge of processes of dying, drawing, and the design of her compositions comes from that family knowledge. “I remember that when I was a girl my grandmother embroidered fabrics and made ceramics. That ceramic had a design and I would help my grandmother draw it. We would also make animals, that we created with earth”¹³ Regarding her processes for creation during that period, she also comments: “First she would dye raw white fabric with bark and then she would apply mud to it so that it was black. Then my grandmother would grab charcoal or a piece of white earth and with that she would draw a design so that I could learn by seeing that drawing, so that I could embroider with needle and thread, to practice.”¹⁴

            Her most important process of learning about and experimenting with natural dyes occurred during the time that she participated in SHRA workshops, in which she worked with achiote, huito, and Amazonian colored earth. “Doctor Pablo Macera contracted me to do a test, then I painted. Before working on that painting, I had gone to get the natural dyes from the Pisqui River, which is very far. I have gotten different- colored earth from there: yellow, red, brown, white, medium dark brown, everything there was.”¹⁵ In 1998, Elena participated in SHRA’s intercultural workshops and developed, along with the Shipibo artist Roldán Pinedo (Yarinacocha, Ucayali, 1971), a group of canvases dyed with mahogany and other natural dyes, and a series of representations of Amazonian fauna. In 1999, those were included in the exhibition Telas pintadas shipibas (Shipiba Painted Fabrics), curated by María Belén Soria, and held in the Temporary Exhibition Hall of the Art Museum of the National University of San Marcos. The animals represented in those canvases served to transmit particular ideas of Shipibo-Konibo Indigenous knowledge, human nature prior to animals and plants in the Amazonian territory, and their identification as protector spirits or figures of Amazonian mythology. During those years, Elena and Roldán “preferred to paint animals because, as they say, they have autonomous souls and lives just like people (joni). According to the Shipibo cosmovision, in ancient times, animals had a human appearance and their name carried the idea of the joni into which they were going to transform.”¹⁶

        Among others, this group of paintings includes Ino (1998–99) and Huiso Ino (1998–99), two representations of a feline or jaguar, and a black feline, respectively, titled with their names in Shipibo-Konibo. Both animals, in each of the compositions, appear accompanied by a frame of branches and leaves, and are depicted from a lateral perspective. These spaces delimited by elements of the Amazonian flora that enclose the views toward the river are characteristic of the Amazonian pictorial tradition of the twentieth century. If you look closely, you notice that the lines marked on the branches are very similar to those of the jaguar’s body: the spots on the feline body have a very similar form to the leaves in the external landscape. In other words, it is as if animals and plants respond to the same patterns, have the same nature, demonstrating the shared identities and affinities.

            Elena connects these two paintings with very specific moments from her memory: the process of learning from her grandmother during her childhood. For her, those early experiences in the Amazonian territory marked her subsequent form of inspiration: “That painting was made because [...] I lived with my grandma in the faraway high mountains, where there were not any people, it was just an encampment when I was very little. We would cross ravines until we reached the field, we would see many animals, many birds that sang, many monkeys crossed the path. So I remember this and grew up with that memory, with those visions, and therefore I have painted wildlife.”¹⁵

    The huiso ino, or black puma, is a character whose history is associated with the destruction of the Amazonian forests due to logging and the exploitation of different resources, such as petroleum. Mythological beings or protector spirits like him, which represent the bond between the human and the animal, are at risk of disappearing because of the devastation of the Amazon. In an oral narrative recovered by Roldán and Elena, the presence of this feline and its relation with other forest beings is analyzed: “That was in that time, when the forests had not been destroyed by loggers. Now the black puma almost doesn’t exist because loggers have come in to take the wood, and the black puma could be in the depths of the high mountain because nobody goes there. Something mysterious always exists in that place, such as the mother of snakes, the mother of all the animals, the mother of the trees, enchanted spirits; because the jungle always has its enchanted spirits that protect it.”¹⁷

            Elena uses the kené designs to compose her signature in the lower left corner of her paintings. These contribute to creating an identifying element that emphasizes her Indigenous kinship, along with the animal’s name written in Shipibo-Konibo. In this way, she names them based on her own language, continuing a—usually Western—tradition of the study and identification of Amazonian fauna, but, this time, in her own voice. The kené coexists with the image of this being and sustains Elena’s identity as an artist. In these works, it is possible to recognize a practice that is connected to the artist’s personal experiences and, at the same time, with broader concepts about the ways of understanding the world that originate in the Amazon. Elena concentrates on the representation of Amazonian flora and fauna—a constant theme in the artistic tradition of the region—but seeks to emphasize the spiritual dimension, other modes of relating with the natural surroundings, and establishing connections between diverse beings and knowledges of her community.

            Chonon Bensho studied in the Eduardo Meza Saravia Artistic Training School in Pucallpa, graduating in 2018. Her learning process was marked by her interest in bringing together the lessons learned in her family and community with her academic training at the school. Her educational experience enabled her to find her own path for expressing her ideas. She also follows the healing tradition of her ancestors, highlighting the lessons learned from her grandfather: “We practice like my grandfather practiced, in a very ancient way. He didn’t just treat people, but rather he had to see if that person really wanted to be cured or not.”¹⁸ In recent years, the artist has carried out ethnographic research on members of her own family accompanied by the work of the writer and researcher Pedro Favaron. All of this has enabled her to get closer to traditional knowledge, an inheritance from her ancestors, and has been a major influence on her current artistic practice.

            When thinking about the training of Shipibo- Konibo artists, Chonon emphasizes the uniqueness of the knowledge transmitted by each family, regardless of their belonging to a particular Indigenous people: “Each family has their own way of teaching their grandchildren, their children. Each woman had her experiences, her ways of teaching. And, one goes about learning and creating their own style from all these mixtures.”¹⁹ Additionally, she highlights the importance of a search for technical perfectionism starting in childhood or what she describes as “doing well”: “We had to do things well. Once, I made a piece of pottery that was a little crooked and my grandmother grabbed it and threw it. Later, she told me I had to do it again. And the same thing with embroidery. If the backside of the embroidery was not good, you had to go back and undo it and embroider it again until the whole thing was correct.”²⁰

            In her work, Maya Kené (2018), using the technique of embroidery, Chonon represents a pyramidal composition divided in three different levels. These include: the world of water; then, that shared by humans, plants, and animals; and, third, the world of the heavens, with the moon, the sun, and a triangular representation with clear references to the Christian Trinity. This structure is marked by lines that interconnect with a series of leaves, without beginning or end. The Maya kené, or circular design, is made with a type of embroidery more widely known as kano and “that, like the healing songs, advances by turning, and particularly takes it shapes from the winding serpentine paths of the Amazonian rivers that have always been the main form of communication and transportation between towns.”²¹

            In the case of this work, the kené connects everything. Creating a parallel between plants and natural elements, the lines of the kené model the form of the leaves, the course of the water, and the movement and vibration of all beings. The kené constitutes the structure of the composition and supports the different levels that constitute it: “The Maya kené is the circular kené, which unites all the elements that surround it respecting the trees and the plants. They are all united and the question is whether or not we respect that.”¹⁹ Chonon thus emphasizes the interconnection between the different elements and how the harmonic coexistence around the tahuari, a large tree that represents peace and calm for the artist, is presented in the center of the embroidery. In front of the tree, a feminine figure holds one of its flowers, highlighting the connection between humans and plants. The work constitutes a representation of the spiritual space of coexistence between humans, plants, and animals, supported and framed by the river and the forest.

            The embroidery’s composition is symmetrical, showing a series of dualities, such as the feminine and the masculine, the sun and the moon, the horizontality of fish and the verticality of trees, and is composed based on the artist’s desire to achieve a balance: “The arrival point is the search for that balance. It is the balance that should exist, complementariness, dialogue, and respect.”²⁰ This is based on the “harmonious tension” between opposites (Bensho and Favaron) that is a fundamental part of this embroidery. Likewise, the pyramidal composition establishes a dialogue with another drawing, made by Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamayhua, in 1613, that deploys the same structure to represent the Incan cosmovision. The artist used this image as a reference. The drawing includes a cross and also shows, in the upper part, the duality between the sun and the moon, and, in the central part, between man and woman. For Chonon, including the triangles in reference to the Christian Trinity is a way of reclaiming that dimension of her own spirituality. On the other hand, the representations of the heavens in the work account for the elements that have an influence on the interconnected beings in the composition: “The sun illuminates and nourishes the planets, the moon allows us to see in the midst of the darkness and shines for everyone, so that we can all see.”²⁰

            In Maya Kené, Chonon proposes a view of the Amazonian territory in which all beings are interconnected and that is the basis for the development of the knowledges of Indigenous peoples. In the work, the characters dialogue and form a balance, whose alteration would leave us without a future and dehumanize us little by little. She explains it as follows: “That is why I believe that there cannot be Indigenous people, nor Indigenous art, nor ancestral knowledges, without territory. Disconnecting ourselves from the territory would mean losing what sets us apart as a people from the rest of society organized under the idea of the nation-state. Territory is our past, it is our present, and if we want to continue being Shipibo-Konibo, it must also be our future. And I think the same thing can be said about humans as a whole since human beings are part of nature; if we continue destroying the environment, motivated by our greed, we will continue getting sick and dehumanizing.”²²

            In her paintings at the end of the twentieth century, Elena Valera represents Amazonian fauna and shows a distinct way of understanding the relationships between beings—the fluidity among the bonds of humans, plants, and animals—related to the knowledges of the Shipibo-Konibo people to which she belongs. Her felines, made with natural dyes, appear surrounded by the shapes of plants that frame the image and account for a shared nature. Chonon, two decades later, uses kené designs to emphasize the balance between beings that coexist in the Amazonian territory through a symmetrical and pyramidal composition.