Rember Yahuarcani On Wielding Paint as a Tool of Cultural Preservation and Resistance

<img decoding="async" class="lazyload wp-image-1597236 size-full-width" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/JL-005925-RY-02.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="Rember Yahuarcani’s vivid nocturnal composition where human, insect, and animal forms merge in motion across glowing red and violet bands, evoking mythic continuities between earthly and spiritual realms.” width=”970″ height=”776″ data-caption=’Rember Yahuarcani, <em>El Arte Indígena Contemporáneo (AIC)</em>, 2025. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Courtesy of Josh Lilley, London. Photo by Ben Westoby / Fine Art Documentation</span>’>

Across ancient civilizations and Indigenous communities, humans have developed diverse traditions, practices and rituals to access the imaginative and spiritual dimension of mythopoetics—a realm through which earthbound, time-bound bodies grasp deeper truths about their place in the cosmos. For the Uitoto Nation of northern Amazonia, Peru, as for many other Amazonian peoples, tobacco has long served as the primary channel to access this dimension—not as an escape from reality but as a heightened awareness of it. Ritual acts of tobacco inhalation, blowing and purification are not merely physical or medicinal; they are cosmological gestures to “access myth,” allowing the artist and community to enter a state in which the mythical and ancestral worlds coexist. Entering altered states of consciousness thus becomes a portal to commune with mythic beings, receive visions and surrender to a natural process of mythopoiesis—one that links the living with their ancestors and mediates relationships among humans, forests and spirits. In this sense, the tobacco ritual becomes a form of epistemology: a way of knowing through which the artist accesses knowledge of origin, cosmology and the interdependence of all beings.

Yet even in the heart of the Amazon, these practices—and the traditional cultures and myths they sustain—remain endangered, as Indigenous communities face unrelenting pressure from modernization and the extractive logic of Western capitalism. The art of Rember Yahuarcani embodies both an act of resistance and a means of preserving and carrying forward a rich ancestral heritage of myths and traditions. For Yahuarcani, contemporary art serves as a platform to protect, revive and transmit Indigenous cosmologies and ontologies—passing them to new generations while also sharing these alternative systems of knowledge with a broader Western world now facing the collapse and consequences of its capitalist illusion of continuous growth.

The broader art world may have only recently encountered Yahuarcani and his father, Santiago Yahuarcani, through their inclusion in the most recent Venice Biennale curated by Adriano Pedrosa. Yet their practice extends back generations, rooted in the ancestral traditions of their Aimeni (White Heron) clan—a lineage that continues to speak through their work today. When faced with their large-scale, kaleidoscopic paintings, it is impossible not to be drawn in by the depth of their spontaneous and profoundly authentic world-building, resulting in richly symbolic and layered narratives populated by fantastical, hybrid figures that merge myth and natural observation before any coded cultural canon—inviting viewers to contemplate human existence in its rawest and most creative attunement, as part of a larger cosmic order.

“Tobacco represents power. The knowledge—the power—comes from tobacco. You need to eat it or smoke it to receive that knowledge,” explains Rember Yahuarcani when we finally meet in person, on the occasion of his first-ever U.K. solo show, “Here Lives the Origin,” at Josh Lilley in London through November 20. “Before I start to paint, I always smoke tobacco. You hold it in your mouth; it’s not about getting drunk or high. Tobacco gives you a mission or it doesn’t—it tells you something or it stays silent. It’s not for intoxication; it’s for focus and direction.”

According to Yahuarcani, his art originates from this ritual passed down from his father and grandfather before him. It is a practice carried through generations as a way to preserve a specific system of knowledge—an ontology and cosmology that have always defined his community—and to reconnect with the very first creator and artist. “Buinaima used tobacco. Before creating animals or humans, Buinaima slept and drank tobacco. In his dreams, he saw everything—the world as it would be,” Yahuarcani says, unveiling the rich cosmology that has guided his people for generations. In that visionary state, Buinaima saw the forms of animals, plants and the first humans and by naming them, brought them into being.

In Uitoto mythology, Buinaima is the primordial creator, the being who dreamed, sang and spoke the world into existence. According to oral traditions, before there were forests, rivers or humans, Buinaima consumed sacred tobacco (mapacho) and entered a dreamlike trance through which creation unfolded. In that state, he envisioned the forms of animals, plants and humans and by naming them, called them into being.

From this original act of creation, tobacco emerges not merely as a plant but as a cosmic medium of creation and knowledge—a sacred bridge between thought, word and material form that allows the artist to momentarily access the same space, continuing Buinaima’s act of creation by entering the mythic dimension where imagination, spirit and matter converge.

“The purpose of tobacco is to connect this visible world with the invisible one—the world of myths, gods and spirits,” Yahuarcani says. “Both territories are important: the visible one, with the river and the forest and the invisible one, where the stories live. My art is a way to link these two worlds.”

As those words suggest, becoming an artist has always been both a mission and a calling for Yahuarcani within his community. Another figure who appears in his paintings—and with whom he closely identifies—is Fídoma, the creator of colors and a youthful cultural hero who brings beauty and diversity into the world. “He created color in the forest—from the bark of trees, from fruits, from the earth and rivers. Before him, all animals had only two colors: black and white,” Yahuarcani says. Wandering through the forest, Fídoma used pigments from tree bark, fruits, clay and plants to paint the world, giving each animal, plant and river its distinct color and essence.

As Yahuarcani describes him, Fídoma is playful, curious and rebellious—a teenager who disobeys his parents to continue painting in the forest, driven by wonder and creativity. He stands beyond authority and social constraint, embodying the power of boundless imagination to renew the world. In Yahuarcani’s interpretation, Fídoma represents the first artist, the archetype of the painter who channels divine imagination into form—the origin of art, creativity and cultural expression in Uitoto cosmology. “For me, that story feels close to what we do in contemporary art. It’s like an installation—Fídoma in the jungle, creating color is the first artist. Even today, he’s still painting through us.”

A profound sense of responsibility runs through these words. “Through painting, I become a kind of channel that brings that invisible world into this one,” Yahuarcani says. “For a long time, other people—anthropologists, outsiders—spoke about us and our culture. But now, through contemporary art, we can speak for ourselves. It gives us the chance to share our own history directly, in a universal language that doesn’t need translation.”

Yahuarcani’s works are far more than beautiful, colorful or even psychedelic contemporary paintings. They function as material repositories and imaginative portals safeguarding the ancestral knowledge cultivated by his community through centuries of mythopoiesis and ritual practice—knowledge deeply attuned to the forces of nature and the living universe. In this way, his paintings serve as both cultural manifesto and act of resistance.

Occupying both ceremonial and political space, they invite the Western world to reawaken to a different worldview—an alternative to the extractive illusion of Western capitalism—and to embrace the resonant message of interconnection among humans, animals, landscapes and spirits that lies at the heart of Uitoto mythology. “When you enter that space—the world of myth—it’s not only stories but also messages,” Yahuarcani says. “It’s a way of restoring our connection with nature, reminding us that everything is alive and interconnected. It’s not human-centered; nothing stands apart.”

What unfolds through Yahuarcani’s paintings is not only the entire Uitoto myth of creation but also an epistemological system bridging the natural and spiritual realms, holding transient human existence in suspension. In this new body of work, he visualizes multiple deities, capturing and translating the vital spiritual pulse of Indigenous nations through a vivid cast of creatures and plants. Iridescent streams of color evoke the interconnection between beings and realms—a fluid, continuous movement of transformation and hybridization that animates the planet’s evolution.

Yet, as Yahuarcani laments, these rich cosmologies are slowly disappearing. “In Lima, people think of myths as something from the past, like old stories that are no longer alive, but when you go to the communities, when you travel by river or deep into the forest, every myth, every story is still living. When my grandmother told me those stories, I received them directly, as something still breathing,” he adds, recalling her role in transmitting knowledge of the aquatic and cosmic worlds of their clan and the histories of suffering, displacement and survival they endured.

Yahuarcani carries this heritage through painting, passing it to future generations through a medium contemporary society can recognize. Art, in this sense, preserves an imaginative space where myths can continue to live and breathe. “Every day, many elders die—grandmothers, grandfathers, Indigenous leaders. In 40 or 50 years, if we don’t preserve them, these stories could disappear. So painting is a way to keep them alive,” he says. “When I look at my child, I see the importance of documenting our culture through art.”

As the pressures of government policy and modernization intensify, the threads of communal connection grow ever more fragile. Yahuarcani’s art becomes an act of renewal—sustaining the mythic imagination that, as a ground of symbolic belonging, has long bound his people together through a shared heritage of symbols. Through his work, ancestral images continue to speak, maintaining the community’s inner cohesion even as the outer world continues to change.

A key figure in Yahuarcani’s paintings is a hybrid, serpent-like woman—a messenger and servant between worlds. “There are many goddesses in our myths, women with great power who guide others,” he says. “She can slip between them; she moves between the visible and the invisible.”

When he paints, Yahuarcani is not fully conscious. “I surrender to the process. I don’t plan the composition or decide the lines in advance—they just appear. The figures, the butterflies, the colors—they emerge on their own.” His visions are not hallucinations but dreams that allow him to enter, in a Jungian sense, the collective unconscious—a liminal dimension between the visible and invisible, sensory and imaginative realms where everything exists in potential. “For us, dreams are very important—they tell how the first human was made or how the fish was made. Art originates in the dream space.”

It is no coincidence that the painting of the serpent goddess is also the one in which Yahuarcani introduces words. “Sometimes I include language in the paintings too, like poetry. That comes in the middle of the process, not always at the end,” he says. “When the first human walked the earth, he met the serpent—not a small one, but an immense, energetic being. The first human looked at it and exclaimed a word—Nɨyu. That was the first word ever spoken in our language. From that moment, creation began through language.”

Here, Yahuarcani positions himself as a go-between—a carrier of knowledge and a mediator between the pre-linguistic, mythical realm of symbols and the visible, communicable universe of words. Titled El Origen de las Lenguas (The Origin of Languages) (2025), this painting embodies the process of the world coming into being through language.

Yet it is another painting downstairs, El Arte Indígena Contemporáneo (AIC) / Contemporary Indigenous Art (CIA) (2025), that stands as both testament and manifesto of Yahuarcani’s art, revealing its central role in preserving and transmitting the knowledge system of the Uitoto community. Here, all the hybrid divine creatures and ancestral spirits converge in a kaleidoscopic, vivid dance. Floating at the center, the serpent-like goddess moves between realms, linking humanity and nature, the visible and the invisible, the past and the future. “In our community, we believe knowledge is collective. My work is my own, but the knowledge it carries belongs to everyone. It comes from shared wisdom,” Yahuarcani says.

In the red inscription across the top of the painting, Yahuarcani reasserts this agency—challenging both the historical erasure of Indigenous narratives in contemporary art and the persistent efforts of mestizo intermediaries to study, translate and aestheticize Indigenous cosmologies through a foreign gaze that inevitably objectifies and instrumentalizes them. “As Juma wrote, white, mestizo and Amazonian curators who claim to be ‘making the Indigenous world visible’ are merely continuing colonial, neocolonial and paternalistic practices that silence centuries of knowledge and voices that deserve to be heard,” it reads.

Gathering the memories of his ancestors, the sacred knowledge of medicinal plants, the sounds of the jungle and the Uitoto myths that reveal the many configurations of the universe, Yahuarcani’s visionary paintings serve as both vessel and portal—keeping this wisdom alive while using the language of contemporary art to convey it to a broader world that urgently needs its lessons.

At the same time, his work invites us to listen and to contemplate with open minds and hearts—to step outside Western frameworks of perception—and to receive what messengers like Yahuarcani bring forth from within their communities, preserving the depth and symbolism of this knowledge in the authenticity of its original creation and transmission, rooted in and sustained by an ancestral culture strong enough to have endured across generations.

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