Shared Threads: Maria Lino’s Portrait of a Shipibo Healer

Exhibition Checklist: Maria Lino Drawn Stitches, 2011 Multi-channel video installation Dimensions variable Courtesy of the Artist

Shared Threads

Maria Lino Ancestral Rhythms, 2011 Multi-channel video installation Dimensions variable Courtesy of the Artist Maria Lino In the Beginning, 1998 Acrylic on paper 11 x 17 inches Courtesy of the Artist Maria Lino & Olga Mori In the Beginning (Collaboration), 2011 Acrylic, yarn and ink on cloth 29 x 30 inches Courtesy of the Artist Amelia Monte Luiza Untitled, 2011 Ink on cloth 56 x 62 inches Private Collection Olga Mori Family Untitled, 2011 Ink, embroidery and appliqué on dyed cloth 61 x 26 inches Private Collection Olga Mori Family Untitled, 2011 Ink, embroidery and appliqué on dyed cloth 61 x 26 inches Private Collection Olga Mori Untitled, 2011 Ink on cloth 62 x 15 ½ inches Private Collection

M A G A Z I N E

Ida Margoth Untitled, n.d.

Embroidery on dyed cloth 27 x 27 inches Private Collection

Maria Lino’s Portrait of a Shipibo Healer j u l y GRAPHIC DESIGN by alberto insua

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hared Threads presents a collaborative experience where two artists from vastly different cultures and artistic traditions came together in the Amazon region, in Pucallpa, Peru. The result is an extraordinary multi-media integration of tradition, design and technique in a soulful exchange of knowledge, the majority of which occurred during the course of ten intensive days of collecting video footage in Pucallpa.

Maria Lino is a Florida International University graduate who, in 2011, was awarded a Fulbright US Scholar Grant. The artist spent eight months working in Peru on an ongoing series of video portraits entitled Working Hands/Manos Trabajadoras. At this time, I was also traveling frequently to Peru, conducting a pilot study that would launch my dissertation research on the art and healing tradition of the Shipibo people of the Amazon region. I had been working closely with Olga Mori, a Shipibo artist and healer, in traditional healing ceremonies. She also introduced me to Shipibo ways of communal art making and the meaning behind the complexity of the patterns. On my next trip to Pucallpa, I invited Maria to join us, and Olga graciously agreed to be the subject of a video portrait.

The videos in this exhibition, Drawn Stitches and Ancestral Rhythms, are part of the Working Hands project. In this series, Lino records and celebrates the manual rhythms and daily routines of women who engage in repetitive labor at home and in the workplace. During this process, one-on-one conversations naturally occur as the artist observes and documents their hands at work, creating a visual and oral history of their daily lives and ways of perceiving the world around them. The concept is fully realized in the installation space when the viewer is also drawn into the rhythm and repetition of simple actions in an almost meditative encounter with the work. Aesthetically, Lino synchronizes both image and sound in multi-channel projections, skillfully emphasizing compositional elements to enhance the repetitive flow.

In Pucallpa, the concept of the video portrait expanded more deeply into a collaborative process when Maria commissioned Olga to co-create an embroidered reproduction of Lino’s drawing In the Beginning. Both artists then elaborated on the original design and contributed with the embroidery as the cloth went back and forth between them over the next several weeks. This exhibition also includes a selection of traditional Shipibo textiles, some of which were communally produced by Olga Mori and her female family members in this same manner of passing the cloths back and forth among themselves, with each artist offering a unique contribution to the creation of the whole.

Like the women artists of the Shipibo tradition, Maria Lino learned how to sew from the women in her family. Lino recalls, “I watched the movement of their hands pulling the needles and tightening the threads, the repetition of stitches. My work in Shared Threads is an extension of that experience.”

Ana Estrada Curator

and

Healing

he central creation myth of the Shipibo people of the Peruvian Amazon speaks of a pregnant Mother Anaconda who gives birth to the world. Living along the banks of the Pucallpa-Ucayali River, a major Southern tributary of the Amazon River, the Shipibo inhabit an aquatic universe where the source of all sustenance emerges from the river. The Anaconda represents an Earth Mother deity and the complex geometric forms depicted in Shipibo design originate in the patterns of her skin.1 The Anaconda is not only a physical creature that inhabits the river, but a mythical being at the center of the healing practices that produce their artistic imagery.

The people’s complex relationship with the environment of the rainforest, with its lush plant life and animal inhabitants, is reflected in the Shipibo designs that manifest primarily in the media of painting and embroidery. Their healing tradition involves the use of plant medicine, such as the powerful entheogen ayahuasca, to induce visionary states. The geometric forms commonly seen in the visions are believed to possess kikin, or the power to restore balance and harmony to the distressed body and soul of a patient.2 The designs are also considered to be portals to other worlds where healers receive wisdom from the Earth Mother Anaconda and her plant teachers as they work on their patients. Throughout the ceremony, the healing patterns are implanted into the patient’s energy field through the use of sound vibrations, or ícaros, sung by the healers and believed to revitalize the patient back to health. The patterns are then visually documented in the textiles in an artistic tradition practiced exclusively by the women of the culture group.3 Stitch by stitch, the visionary knowledge received in Shipibo healing ceremonies is passed along from generation to generation through the lineage of women artists and healers.

Barrett H. Martin, Woven Songs of the Amazon: Icaros and Weavings of the Shipibo Shamans. (Atlanta: 50th Anniversary Conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology, 2005), 6.

Angelika Gebhart-Sayer, The Cosmos Encoiled: Indian Art of the Peruvian Amazon, exh. cat. (New York: Center for Inter-American Relations, 1984), 12-13.

3 Howard G. Charing, “Communion with the Infinite: The Visual Music of the Shipibo People of the Amazon,” Sacred Hoop, (Winter, 2005): 30.

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C u r at o r ’ s S tat e m e n t

S h i p i b o A rt

S

T

hared Threads presents a collaborative experience where two artists from vastly different cultures and artistic traditions came together in the Amazon region, in Pucallpa, Peru. The result is an extraordinary multi-media integration of tradition, design and technique in a soulful exchange of knowledge, the majority of which occurred during the course of ten intensive days of collecting video footage in Pucallpa.

Maria Lino is a Florida International University graduate who, in 2011, was awarded a Fulbright US Scholar Grant. The artist spent eight months working in Peru on an ongoing series of video portraits entitled Working Hands/Manos Trabajadoras. At this time, I was also traveling frequently to Peru, conducting a pilot study that would launch my dissertation research on the art and healing tradition of the Shipibo people of the Amazon region. I had been working closely with Olga Mori, a Shipibo artist and healer, in traditional healing ceremonies. She also introduced me to Shipibo ways of communal art making and the meaning behind the complexity of the patterns. On my next trip to Pucallpa, I invited Maria to join us, and Olga graciously agreed to be the subject of a video portrait.

The videos in this exhibition, Drawn Stitches and Ancestral Rhythms, are part of the Working Hands project. In this series, Lino records and celebrates the manual rhythms and daily routines of women who engage in repetitive labor at home and in the workplace. During this process, one-on-one conversations naturally occur as the artist observes and documents their hands at work, creating a visual and oral history of their daily lives and ways of perceiving the world around them. The concept is fully realized in the installation space when the viewer is also drawn into the rhythm and repetition of simple actions in an almost meditative encounter with the work. Aesthetically, Lino synchronizes both image and sound in multi-channel projections, skillfully emphasizing compositional elements to enhance the repetitive flow.

In Pucallpa, the concept of the video portrait expanded more deeply into a collaborative process when Maria commissioned Olga to co-create an embroidered reproduction of Lino’s drawing In the Beginning. Both artists then elaborated on the original design and contributed with the embroidery as the cloth went back and forth between them over the next several weeks. This exhibition also includes a selection of traditional Shipibo textiles, some of which were communally produced by Olga Mori and her female family members in this same manner of passing the cloths back and forth among themselves, with each artist offering a unique contribution to the creation of the whole.

Like the women artists of the Shipibo tradition, Maria Lino learned how to sew from the women in her family. Lino recalls, “I watched the movement of their hands pulling the needles and tightening the threads, the repetition of stitches. My work in Shared Threads is an extension of that experience.”

Ana Estrada Curator

and

Healing

he central creation myth of the Shipibo people of the Peruvian Amazon speaks of a pregnant Mother Anaconda who gives birth to the world. Living along the banks of the Pucallpa-Ucayali River, a major Southern tributary of the Amazon River, the Shipibo inhabit an aquatic universe where the source of all sustenance emerges from the river. The Anaconda represents an Earth Mother deity and the complex geometric forms depicted in Shipibo design originate in the patterns of her skin.1 The Anaconda is not only a physical creature that inhabits the river, but a mythical being at the center of the healing practices that produce their artistic imagery.

The people’s complex relationship with the environment of the rainforest, with its lush plant life and animal inhabitants, is reflected in the Shipibo designs that manifest primarily in the media of painting and embroidery. Their healing tradition involves the use of plant medicine, such as the powerful entheogen ayahuasca, to induce visionary states. The geometric forms commonly seen in the visions are believed to possess kikin, or the power to restore balance and harmony to the distressed body and soul of a patient.2 The designs are also considered to be portals to other worlds where healers receive wisdom from the Earth Mother Anaconda and her plant teachers as they work on their patients. Throughout the ceremony, the healing patterns are implanted into the patient’s energy field through the use of sound vibrations, or ícaros, sung by the healers and believed to revitalize the patient back to health. The patterns are then visually documented in the textiles in an artistic tradition practiced exclusively by the women of the culture group.3 Stitch by stitch, the visionary knowledge received in Shipibo healing ceremonies is passed along from generation to generation through the lineage of women artists and healers.

Barrett H. Martin, Woven Songs of the Amazon: Icaros and Weavings of the Shipibo Shamans. (Atlanta: 50th Anniversary Conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology, 2005), 6.

Angelika Gebhart-Sayer, The Cosmos Encoiled: Indian Art of the Peruvian Amazon, exh. cat. (New York: Center for Inter-American Relations, 1984), 12-13.

3 Howard G. Charing, “Communion with the Infinite: The Visual Music of the Shipibo People of the Amazon,” Sacred Hoop, (Winter, 2005): 30.

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Exhibition Checklist: Maria Lino Drawn Stitches, 2011 Multi-channel video installation Dimensions variable Courtesy of the Artist

Shared Threads

Maria Lino Ancestral Rhythms, 2011 Multi-channel video installation Dimensions variable Courtesy of the Artist Maria Lino In the Beginning, 1998 Acrylic on paper 11 x 17 inches Courtesy of the Artist Maria Lino & Olga Mori In the Beginning (Collaboration), 2011 Acrylic, yarn and ink on cloth 29 x 30 inches Courtesy of the Artist Amelia Monte Luiza Untitled, 2011 Ink on cloth 56 x 62 inches Private Collection Olga Mori Family Untitled, 2011 Ink, embroidery and appliqué on dyed cloth 61 x 26 inches Private Collection Olga Mori Family Untitled, 2011 Ink, embroidery and appliqué on dyed cloth 61 x 26 inches Private Collection Olga Mori Untitled, 2011 Ink on cloth 62 x 15 ½ inches Private Collection

M A G A Z I N E

Ida Margoth Untitled, n.d.

Embroidery on dyed cloth 27 x 27 inches Private Collection

Maria Lino’s Portrait of a Shipibo Healer j u l y GRAPHIC DESIGN by alberto insua

1 8

-

s e p t e m b e r

3 0 ,

2 0 1 2