INDIGENOUS ARTIST SARA FLORES BRINGS SHIPIBO-KONIBO WORLDVIEW TO THE VENICE BIENNALE

Sara Flores has been selected to represent Peru at the 61st Venice Biennale, establishing herself as one of the most significant voices in contemporary art from the Amazon. Her work will be the core of the project Sara Flores. From Other Worlds, which will occupy the Peruvian Pavilion during the upcoming edition of the event, opening in May 2026.

Renowned for the symbolic depth of her practice, Flores constructs a visual universe in dialogue with the ancestral knowledge of the Shipibo-Konibo people, the community to which she belongs. Her works, created on fabrics dyed with natural pigments and covered with the geometric patterns known as kené, are not mere decorations: they are maps of knowledge that express a spiritual relationship with the environment, memory, and life itself. Each line, each form, responds to a network of meanings that connect the body, nature, and the cosmos.

The curatorial project, led by Issela Ccoyllo and Matteo Norzi, aims to highlight the relevance and universal reach of these visual practices, which have transcended time to become living languages. The proposal engages with global debates that question the limits of contemporary art and the colonial frameworks that have historically marginalized Indigenous expressions as peripheral.

Lizardo Cauper Pezo, president of the Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo Council (COSHIKOX), stated: “This achievement symbolizes the strength and collective spirit of our Shipibo-Konibo-Xetebo Nation. Through the work of Sara Flores, the voice of our living culture will be heard in Venice—a culture that continues to defend its territory, identity, and ancestral knowledge. The Biennale will serve as a platform for cultural diplomacy, to draw attention to the challenges facing our land, and to affirm that the ways of life of Indigenous peoples do not belong to the past, but to the future of humanity.” 

From Other Worlds invites a shift: it acknowledges the aesthetic and epistemological power of an art that does not conform to Western canons, yet enters into dialogue with them from a critical and deeply rooted perspective in community experience.

Sara Flores’ presence at the Venice Biennale is significant to assert Indigenous authorship as an essential element in conversations about sustainability, decoloniality, and cultural diversity in the 21st century.

“COSHIKOX reaffirms its commitment to uniting the people as an Indigenous Nation, supporting and standing by its artists and knowledge keepers, convinced that art is also a means of creating collective identity, of resistance, of healing, and of building a more just and harmonious world,” the council stated.

*Cover image: Sara Flores. Sara Flores in Her Own Words, 2025. Single-channel video, colour and sound, 5 minutes 21 seconds. Courtesy White Cube.