Hello, my name is Doris Gómez Agustín, I am from the community of San Francisco de
Yarinacocha, Ucayali, Pucallpa.
This afternoon I come before you to explain what my artwork is about, which is kené
that our grandmothers taught us and we learned from them, from their knowledge,
and the paintings that I made which are three versions of how
I learned to make my own kené.
First of all, in the old days our mothers, our grandmothers, gave us our piece of
tocuyo or cañamazo and told us take it, draw your own inspiration, your kené,
it's fine if it's it's ugly, you have to learn, so that later on you can improve
yourself. And what did we do?
We took what they gave us, a piece of tocuyo or cañamazo, some thread and needle
and we began to work, but it came out a little ugly.
But later on we perfected it, perfected until the time came when the kené came out
pretty, which we wore to go to school and in that sense our grandmothers taught us
how to make our own kené, our own embroidery.
The other is through ayahuasca, through ayahuasca, how?
Because there were unayamu masters who had ayahuasca sessions and when the women were
sitting in the ayahuasca ceremony a mother of the kené came and asked the master, I
want to give my knowledge to this woman and when the master sang in the ceremony he
said: the mother of knowledge of the kené says she wants to give that knowledge to
you, because it was special that it gave that person that knowledge.
And an example is that of my mother-in-law, Olga, because they gave her that
knowledge because before she did not have that knowledge of how to get the kené.
One day she went to an ayahuasca ceremony, they gave her a crown of wisdom and the
master told her: mother nature wants to give you that crown of wisdom so that you
learn to externalize the kené and mother wisdom put the crown on
her and from there she started.
The master told her that she can never hit her head and to protect her head from the
sun heat, to be carful to not drop the crow, she had to be very careful with her
head because she was giving a very important knowledge that was the kené and
that is how my mother-in-law began to make a lot of kené, she spend a lot of time in
the kené ______(SHIPIBO
DIALECT),________,_______ many
kinds of kené, that is
the second.
The other is through piri piri, that’s what we call it, it is a
small plant, but it has small balls.
If we didn't know how to make kené, our grandmothers put drops in our eyes and when
we slept many kinds of visions of kené would come, and we captured those visions
in the daytime and the kené would come to our minds and we would practice,
we grabbed the fabric, our thread and needle and we did that in the mornings.
That makes people, that is, the people of Lima want to copy our
designs, but they can't, why?
Because we have that knowledge in our heads, it cannot be copied, everything we
produce are unique pieces and there not copy, copy, copy, it is not a copy; and no
one can take away that knowledge from us, because it is from ourselves, from our
culture, from our ancestral knowledge that we have.
That's all, thank you very much for letting me tell this little summary of my work. Thanks.