Mother Plants and Struggling Women: Visions from Cantagallo/ Rao Titabo Itan Koshi Shinanya Ainbobo

12.11.2022–19.03.2023, MAC Lima, Peru

Mother Plants and Struggling Women video excerpt

Process

About this exhibition

The exhibition Mother Plants and Struggling Women: Visions from Cantagallo took place at MAC Lima from November 2022 to March 2023. The exhibition was the result of an invitation extended to Olinda Silvano (Reshinjabe) and the collective Shinan Imabo (“Our Inspirations”) to rethink and represent the previous two years of the health, social, and political crisis based on their concerns, urgent needs, and desires. Shinan Imabo is comprised of women from the Shipibo-Konibo people living in Cantagallo, a community located on the right bank of the Rímac river in Lima—currently the most populous Indigenous settlement in an urban area of Peru.

Gala Berger, Miguel A. López and Olinda Silvano (Reshinjabe)
Curators

Curatorial Statement

This exhibition is the result of an invitation extended to Olinda Silvano (Reshinjabe) and the Shinan Imabo (Our Inspirations) women’s collective to rethink and represent the last two years of the health, social, and political crisis based on their concerns, urgent needs, and desires. Shinan Imabo is part of the Shipibo-Konibo people. They live in the Cantagallo community, located on the right bank of the Rímac river, in Lima, which is currently the most populous Indigenous settlement in an urban area of Peru. The project was developed for INSITE Commonplaces, an international platform that, working with curators, artists, and writers, promotes forms of production starting from the local.

Between June 2021 and April 2022, twenty-nine women of the Shinan Imabo group made nearly one hundred works in different sizes and materials, such as a paintings on fabrics dyed with mahogany bark, paintings on canvas, embroidery, fabric collages, among others. As a whole, the set, from which we present a selection of here, offers an acute testimony about the community experience, the healing power of plants, solidarity among women, and the forms of collective care in a moment of emergency as a result of COVID-19. The Cantagallo community was severely affected at the beginning of the pandemic. Like many other Indigenous populations, they had to deal with the virus’s advance without access to intercultural medical care that would incorporate a health care model with an Indigenous perspective.

The works also elaborate on family bonds, histories of migration, memories of the Amazon, and the complexities of living in Lima while trying to maintain their Shipibo roots. One important protagonist is kenè – which means design –: geometric patterns created from the visions induced by plants such as ayahuasca or piri piri that also originate from the energy of Ronin’s (anaconda) skin. The pieces present us with a Shipibo vision of the world in which fish, rivers, trees, and fruits are not passive entities to be dominated, but rather active beings with their own knowledge. From this perspective, human life, nature, territory, and spiritual beings exist in a dimension of reciprocity and continuation.

This exhibition offers a different way of understanding the recent social emergency and accompanies the struggles of the Shipibo-Konibo people in their demands for the preservation and respect of their ancestral knowledges, for urgent action against the destruction of the Amazon, and for better living conditions for Indigenous people in Peru and everywhere.

Gala Berger, Miguel A. López and Olinda Silvano (Reshinjabe)

Acknowledgments

Artists

Rosa Pinedo, Jessica Silvano, Salome Buenapico Silvano, Soraida Cumapa, Emilia Teco, Doris Gomez, Dora Inuma, Wilma Maynas, Cecilia Melendez, Edelmira Mori, Fenicia Mori, Karina Pacaya, Claudia Pacaya, Delia Pizarro, Metsá Rama, Juana Reategui, Betty Reategui, Silvia Ricopa, Tita Rona (Juana Nunta), Mechita Sampayo, Cordelia Sanchez (Pesin Kate), Olinda Silvano (Reshinjabe), Lucy Silvano, Sadith Silvano, Zaida Silvano, Nelda Silvano, Inés Sinuiri, Isolina Tananta, Priscila Vásquez y Delicia Zavaleta.

Curators

Gala Berger, Miguel A. López y Olinda Silvano (Reshinjabe)

Exhibition design

Germen Estudio / Giacomo Castagnola

Eucalyptus carpenter

Roger Pedro Camones Poma

Seamstresses

Lupe Margarita Yepez y María Enriqueta Pérez Ñaña

Patrons

INSITERS
International Community Foundation (ICF), San Diego
La Atalaya Foundation

Collaborators

Centro Amazónico de Antropología y Aplicación Práctica (CAAAP), Perú
Manuel Cornejo and Cristina Gutierrez
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC Lima)
Nicolás Gómez and Giuliana Vidarte

Photography
Gala Berger
Juan Pablo Murrugarra
Philipp Scholz Rittermann

Acknowledgments

Metsá Rama
Giacomo Castagnola
Manuel Cornejo
Carmen Cuenca
Juan Díaz
Nicolás Gómez
Cristina Gutierrez
Ronin Koshi
Michael Krichman
Anselmo López
Ena López
Juan Pablo Murrugarra
Miguel Quiñones
Cordelia Sánchez (Pesin Kate)
Philipp Scholz Rittermann
Sandra Serrano
Jessica Silvano
Súper Shipibos de Cantagallo
Andrea Torreblanca
Giuliana Vidarte
Drusila Yamunaqué Alfaro
Melissa Zapata Obando
Centro Amazónico de Antropología y Aplicación Práctica (CAAAP)

Works commissioned for Common Thread | INSITE Commonplaces.
Editor-Curator: Miguel A. López

Mother Plants and Struggling Women: Visions from Cantagallo/ Rao Titabo Itan Koshi Shinanya Ainbobo

Overview

Curatorial Statement

Acknowledgments