The Cultures of the Jungle

Rember Yahuarcani is a well-known painter and activist from the north of Amazonia in Peru. His paintings aim to represent on canvas the stories and worldviews of the Garza Blanca clan, one of the last families of the Witoto nation in Peruvian Amazonia: from the fables, myths and traditions passed down by his grandmother Martha López Pinedo, matriarch of the Aimeni, to the terrible crimes and abuses committed against their people for the extraction of rubber.

In this conversation, in the framework of the exhibition Amazonias. The Ancestral Future, Rember Yahuarcani will be sharing the meaning of his work. For the artist, listening to and disseminating indigenous cultures is key to preventing them from being erased. At the same time, his paintings force us to question concepts strongly rooted in our imaginaries, such as the existence of a “virgin forest” or the figure of the “savage”, that served to justify the plunder and the exploitation of the forest during the colonial process, and still continue today.

The session will have a pedagogical dossier (in Catalan) so that the students can work on the contents beforehand in the classroom and thus make the most out of the lecture.