Collaborative Making: Shipibo-Conibo Women Artists of Peru’s Amazon

In recent years, Amazonian artists in Peru and their art have increasingly received international attention which speaks to the visual vibrancy of their work and global awareness of the importance of the Amazon regions in our world’s changing climate. This paper considers how several contemporary Shipibo-Conibo women artists draw on their ancestral traditions of the Peruvian Amazon as they respond to their increasingly multifaceted global environment. In their work, one sees new processes of making and cultural memory as artists design, produce, engage, and exchange their textiles and art. The processes and distinctions of collaborative art making and crafting is examined in the social networks of remote riverine villages and in cities of Pucallpa and Lima as this paper also considers the contemporary viewer’s conceptions of the Amazon and the historical, social, and political narratives the viewer may bring to the arts of the Amazon region.

This work draws on my research and participation in Field Museum’s expeditions into Peru’s Amazon to record, document, collect textiles as well as create a MacArthur supported film, "Shipibo ...the Movie of our Memories." In this film, Shipibo community members comment on the anthropologist Harry Tschopik Jr.'s 1953 film on the Shipibo people, Men of the Montaña, and discuss the changes in their culture and their aspirations for their future. Images used in the presentation will feature both historical and contemporary art work as the practice, processes, and meaning of making in Peru’s Amazon are examined.