The exhibition Non Kené Nete [Our Spiritual Worlds] introduces the Shipibo-Konibo culture, its constant struggle to represent itself and the stories, rituals, and memories transmitted from generation to generation. It brings together the work of nineteen artists from the Peruvian Amazon, many of whom have migrated to the capital, Lima, where they founded their own community twenty-five years ago: Cantagallo, an urban Indigenous settlement that has been maintained for years as a beacon of resistance of ancestral wisdoms and Shipibo community life in opposition to processes of erasure and the homogenization of its culture within the Western world.

This exhibition showcases these experiences of urban Indigenous life from the perspective of kené textile art. The word kené describes the geometric patterns and designs based on the skin of the anaconda. Creation of kené is intrinsically connected to the knowledge that comes from plants and reciprocity with the natural world. It possesses a profound symbolic meaning as the representation of the geography of the forest, the fauna, and other living organisms.

A number of works in this exhibition were commissioned by INSITE Commonplaces for the project Common Thread, curated by Miguel A. López between 2021 and 2023. That project included nearly one hundred works in various sizes and materials, such as paintings on fabrics dyed with mahogany bark, paintings on canvas, embroideries, fabric collages, etc. The selection presented here offers a poignant testimony of community experience, the healing power of plants, solidarity among women, and forms of collective care during a period of emergency brought on by COVID-19. The community of Cantagallo was heavily affected at the beginning of the pandemic. Like many other Indigenous peoples, they had to contend with the advance of the virus without access to intercultural medical attention that incorporated an Indigenous perspective on health.

A second set of works consists of recent productions, created with thread embroidery dyed with natural dyes: each embroidered line can be read as a stroke of love, mourning, protest, and preservation of a life in close contact with nature, even in the city. Finally, a third group was carried out in the context of the Situated Fellowship Grant, 2025–26, awarded by Visible, Fondazione Pistoletto, and Fondazione Zegna, in recognition of their commitment to preserving knowledge of plants and natural life at risk of extinction. The museographic design, by Giacomo Castagnola (Germen Estudio), situates this conversation within Shipibo-Konibo knowledge systems, in which rivers, trees, anacondas, fish, and fruits are not passive entities to be dominated, but rather organisms imbued with vitality and agency.

Non Kené Nete hosts an ensemble of voices and whispers that brings together a remarkable community of creators. It is a call to find harmony with urgent practices in the struggle for survival, against dispossession, inviting us to feel how all worlds are intimately interconnected.

Gala Berger and Olinda Silvano

In memory of Jessica Silvano Inuma and Koyo Kouoh.