Rember Yahuarcani is a painter, writer, curator, and activist who belongs to the Aimeni clan (the White Heron clan) of the Uitoto Nation of northern Amazonia in Peru. Yahuarcani’s paintings draw on the narratives of the Uitoto mythology and Western art traditions and techniques. Since 2003, his artistic vocabulary has moved from a descriptive style found in his early paintings to the creation of large-scale lyrical, oneiric landscapes like the one included in the Biennale Arte. Through delicate traces and bright colours, Yahuarcani presents scenes that invite us to immerse ourselves in Uitoto thinking, storytelling, and daily life in order to see and feel the world from a different belief system. The animals, plants, spirits, humans, and other beings of the Amazon rainforest that populate his paintings are depicted as molecularly connected to each other; the artist reclaims them as sources of wisdom. Yahuarcani paints his multiple characters perpetually in motion as if they were escaping from the identities and narratives imposed by the state and the Western world.
This is the first time the work of Rember Yahuarcani is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Miguel López
