threads & patterns: living indigenous art of the americas

Unchained.Art Contemporary Gallery, in collaboration with the Center for Shamanic Education and Exchange, presents ‘threads & patterns: living indigenous art of the americas’ – an exhibition of Wixarika yarn paintings from Mexico, Shipibo Conibo tapestries from the Peruvian Amazon, and Kogi woven bags from the mountains of Colombia.

Each piece carries meaning that predates Western art categories. These are objects of ceremony, maps of a cosmology, and transmissions of knowledge passed down through generations of makers. The works are not documentation of a vanishing practice. They are the practice itself, ongoing and alive.

The Wixarika works are made by the Carrillo Bautista family from Real de Catorce, Mexico, whose father is a maracame – a Huichol shaman and healer. The Shipibo Conibo tapestries come from families in the Ucayali River basin, where intricate geometric designs called kene encode healing songs. In Shipibo understanding, sound and pattern are the same thing. The Kogi gamá mochilas are hand-woven by Kogi Sanhas – the holy women of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, from agave-hemp and natural pigments. Each bag takes one full moon cycle to weave.

Earlier this year, Shipibo artist Sara Flores became the first Indigenous artist to represent Peru at the Venice Biennale. The Shipibo Conibo tapestries in this exhibition belong to the same lineage, now being recognized at the highest levels of the international art world, and they are on view in Austin this August.