The artist and Uitoto Indigenous leader Santiago Yahuarcani (Pucaurquillo, Peru, 1960) presents his first solo exhibition in Mexico, "El principio del conocimiento," bringing together nearly 40 works at the Museo Universitario del Chopo starting Saturday, October 24, 2026. Among the pieces is "Shimimbro," shown at the 2024 Venice Biennale, as reported by Excélsior.
The show is also the first review of his work to be held in the country, according to El Universal. The works, made between 2004 and 2025, were almost all painted with natural dyes made from turmeric, leaves and lianas on llanchama, a fiber obtained from the bark of jungle trees. For Mexican audiences, the exhibition brings closer one of the most internationally prominent Amazonian Indigenous voices of the moment and opens a dialogue with the painting tradition of Mexico's original peoples.
The curatorship is by Miguel A. López, in collaboration with Darren Pih and Amanda Carneiro, and the show is organized together with the Whitworth at the University of Manchester and the MASP in São Paulo. The paintings feature shamans, deities and origin myths, as well as the memory of the Putumayo genocide, between 1879 and 1912, during rubber extraction; the artist's grandfather, Gregorio López, survived that episode. The selection also includes sculptures by his wife Nereyda López and paintings by his son Rember Yahuarcani, a family exercise reflected in "Jidera Comilla/El origen de la pintura."
Yahuarcani spent years learning the processing of llanchama by observation and today teaches the craft to his grandchildren and daughters. At the media presentation he said that in his family everyone knows how the fiber is processed. About the jungle, he told Excélsior: "We thought this place would always be a paradise." His most recent works portray threats such as logging, gold mining and the laying of fiber optic cable in the Amazon.
The exhibition opens with a talk by the artist on October 24 at 12:00 and remains at the Chopo until March 28, 2027.
This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.
