Place-making, World-making:
Three Amazonian Artists
Curated by Giuliana Borea
Harry Pinedo/Inin Metsa (b. Ucayali, Peru, 1988)
Lives and works in Lima.
Harry Pinedo is a visual artist and a primary intercultural teacher. He belongs to the Shipibo people from Ucayali in Peru’s central Amazon, migrating to Lima in 1995 where he lives in the Shipibo urban community of Cantagallo. His work focuses on issues surrounding internal migration and the making of an urban indigenous community as he raises pressing questions of citizenship and housing rights, while also exploring ontological and ecological issues.
Pinedo’s work encapsulate a wide range of ideas, tensions and dreams of interculturality and justice. For him colour is what the Shipibo people – and other indigenous nations – offer to white mestizo Lima. His work also highlights the way indigenous places are constructed through strong relationships amongst both native and urban communities – not only in terms of culture and one-way migration to the cities, but also through the constant mobility of people and their battles for citizenship rights. The complexity of his work is further revealed through his paintings, where places are also connected by rivers, mountains and animals, showing the key role of other beings as agents of integration and place-making.
Pinedo’s work started to circulate in Peru’s contemporary art circuit since 2010 and has recently been shown internationally in Brazil, France and Spain. He is a recipient of the “Art and Activism against repression during the Covid-19 crisis” grant of the University of York, and his work has recently been featured in the exhibition Ite!/Neno!/Here!: Responses to Covid-19 at the Gallery Crisis in Lima.
This film accompanies Dr Giuliana Borea’s exhibition ‘Place-making, World-making: Three Amazonian Artists’. It is part of her current research, which you can find out about here: Amazonart project.
