Santiago Yahuarcani is a self-taught painter and sculptor who belongs to the Aimeni clan (the White Heron clan) of the Uitoto Nation of northern Amazonia. Yahuarcani’s paintings are neither derivative nor dependent on Western art history. They collect the memories told by his ancestors, the sacred knowledge of medicinal plants, the sounds of the jungle, and the Uitoto myths that explain the multiple configurations of the universe. In his paintings, the territory and its inhabitants show consciousness, affection, memory, and intelligence, and deploy forms of communication that are audible beyond the parameters of settler coloniality. They do not narrate a rigid past but create a conversation with the present and wonder about a collective future. By reclaiming the presence and force of the spirits (guardians) of the plants, trees, and animals, who are largely ignored in the modern era, Yahuarcani stresses how climate catastrophe is not a recent event but part of a long history of colonial dispossession that begins with the eradication of spiritual worlds and the powers that emanate from the close interrelation with the territory.
This is the first time the work of Santiago Yahuarcani is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Miguel López
