“METSÁ NETE” THE BEAUTIFUL VISIONARY WORLD OF CHONON BENSHO
In the exhibition presented by the Alliance Française Lima, the multiple worlds or netes that make up the Shipibo universe are united into one: The world of beauty and art.
Put together through colorful paintings and meticulous embroidery by the artist Chonon Bensho (a name that in Spanish means "woodswallow of medicinal fields") we connect with the knowledge of the ancestors and all of which is transmitted by the spirits, with whom the the artist finds herself in dreams and walks through forests and rivers, dialoguing with medicinal plants and with the beings of nature.
Chonon was born in the community of Santa Clara on the shores of Lake Yarinacocha, and as a Shipiba woman she learned to embroider and paint since she was a child, maintaining a deep connection with the earth, waters, trees and plants; those that make up the cosmos of her work.
Her academic learning is reflected on canvases and fabrics, configuring scenes that reverberate intertwined with the patterns of kené, that kind of writing of Shipiba memory that represents the deepest manifestation of identity, spirituality and creativity. Chonon walks it as a path, guided by a spirit of experimentation typical of contemporary art, but always in dialogue with other times, other spaces, other netes.
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Samatai Jonin Nama (el sueño del hombre dietador) - Óleo sobre lienzo - 90 x 150 cms
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Jene Noma (mujer espiritual del mundo del agua) - Bordado (hilos de colores sobre tela) - 90 x 120 cms
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Rao Nete (mundo medicinal) - Óleo sobre lienzo - 120 x 90 cms
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Tita (madre) - Óleo sobre lienzo - 67 x 54 cms
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Ronin - Óleo sobre tela - 120 x 90 cms
Chonon Bensho is an indigenous artist from the Shipibo-Konibo people. She is a descendant of Onanya traditional medical sages and women who have preserved the artisan and artistic traditions of their ancestors. Since she was a child, she was raised in a traditional environment, in her own language, and cured with the medicinal plants used by people who want to become masters of Kené designs. She studied at the Eduardo Meza Saravia Artistic Training School, in the Yarinacocha district, from which she graduated in 2018 with a thesis on Kené designs. Chonon develops an art with her own language in which the techniques of academic art converge harmoniously with the heritage of the ancient Shipibo artists. She has participated in various group exhibitions in the Ucayali region and has also published, together with her husband, academic research articles on her culture in prestigious indexed journals in Colombia and the United States. She is president of the Association of Artists and Sages of the Shipibo-Konibo people METSÁ.
In this video, made by the Antisuyo Network, Chonon Bensho explains in her mother tongue (with Spanish subtitles), his aesthetic proposal, in which the ancestral and the modern converge, in addition to making a brief interpretation of the symbolism of some of his paintings.
