Place-making, World-making:
Three Amazonian Artists
Curated by Giuliana Borea
Rember Yahuarcani (b. Loreto, Peru, 1986)
Lives and works in Lima and Pebas.
Rember Yahuarcani is a visual artist, writer and activist. He belongs to the Uitoto Áimen people, and lives between Pebas – his hometown situated in Peru’s northern Amazon – and Lima, where he migrated in 2003. His artistic practice explores the Uitoto mythology and Amazonian worlds, working alongside his activist practice which urges the respect of indigenous worlds.
Yahuarcani’s paintings investigate the complexity of the Amazonian philosophy by addressing the Uitoto’s comprehension of the interelationship between humanity and nature. They interrogate western notions of representation and the perspective of space and map-making, thereby challenging the abstraction and one-world dimension of western maps, which are utilised to foster extractivist exploitation of Amazonian land, and in doing so, destroy indigenous places and worlds.
Yahuarcani’s work has been exhibited internationally, including in Peru, Brazil, Argentina, US, UK and China. It has entered collections at the Lima San Marcos Art Museum and the Shangyuan Museum of Modern Art. He has won the II Intercontinental Biennale of Indigenous Art and participated in the 8th Beijing Biennial (2019).Yahuarcani has published extensively, including Buinaima’s Dream (2010), The Summer and the Rain, (2017) and has been a recipient of Peru’s National Award for Children’s Literature. He is also recipient of the ‘Art and Activism against repression during the Covid-19 crisis’ grant of the University of York and has co-curated with Giuliana Borea, the exhibition Ite!/Neno!/Here!: Responses to Covid-19 at Crisis Gallery in Lima, Peru.
This film accompanies Dr Giuliana Borea’s exhibition ‘Place-making, World-making: Three Amazonian Artists’. It is part of her current research project, which you can find out about here: Amazonart project.
