Exhibition Preview | Santiago Yahuarcani: The Beginning of Knowledge
Join us at the special exhibition preview for Santiago Yahuarcani - artist, Indigenous activist, and leader of the Aimeni (White Heron) clan of the Uitoto people - in his first international solo exhibition The Beginning of Knowledge.
Working from a remote Amazonian town in northern Peru, Santiago Yahuarcani creates large-scale, narrative-rich paintings exploring the relationship between the Uitoto people and the natural world.
Using natural pigments and materials, Yahuarcani's work exists outside of Western art history – instead harnessing the memories, history, and wisdom of his ancestors, the sacred knowledge of medicinal plants, the sounds of the jungle, and Uitoto myths that explain the multiple configurations of the universe.
Especially urgent in its retelling of the colonial extraction of natural resources and the enslavement of the Uitoto people during the Peruvian rubber boom, Yahuarcani’s art can be understood as an act of education and protest, vividly illustrating the natural scenery that once was.
Building on his presentation at the 60th Venice Biennale, The Beginning of Knowledge features more than 25 paintings from 2010 to the present, including new work and international loans.
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The Whitworth
Manchester
