CHONON BENSHO
Chonon Bensho( b. 1992, Yarinacocha, Peru) is the first Indigenous Amazonian woman to graduate from art school in Peru. Her research and production reclaim and renew the pictorial language of her people’ s textiles. Born in 1992 in the Shipibo-Konibo community of Santa Clara de Yarinacocha, she won the XII National Painting Competition of the Central Reserve Bank of Peru( BCRP) at age twenty-eight with a textile work. Today, she is one of the most internationally recognized contemporary Amazonian artists. Her work captures myths and customs in a figurative style that meshes with kené— traditional Shipibo designs, the embroidered version of which is known as kewé. In her work Maya kené( Circular design)( 2021), the embroidery advances in a circular motion— as in songs of healing— taking its shape from the winding courses of Amazonia’ s rivers, the main means of communication and transport between villages that depend on these waterways for their survival.( CHRISTIAN BENDAYÁN)
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