“El Territorio de los Abuelos”, 2023, acrylic on canvas.

Rember Yahuarcani is a painter, writer, curator, and activist belonging to the Aimeni clan (White Heron clan) of the Uitoto Nation of the northern Amazon in Peru.

His paintings draw on narratives from Uitoto mythology and Western artistic traditions and techniques. Since 2003, his artistic vocabulary has evolved from the descriptive style of his early paintings to the creation of large-scale, lyrical, dreamlike landscapes, such as the one presented at the Biennale. Through delicate lines and vibrant colors, Yahuarcani presents scenes that invite us to immerse ourselves in the thoughts, narratives, and daily life of the Uitoto, to see and experience 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 one another; the artist takes possession of them as sources of wisdom. Yahuarcani paints his multiple characters in perpetual movement, as if fleeing from the identities and narratives imposed by the state and the Western world.