Spirit beings inhabit the rivers and forests of the Amazon. They are luminous and wise beings (chaikonibo), the spiritual masters of medicine, who preserve the knowledge of healing through plants. They coexist with the eternal Inkan sages (Inka keyoyosma), who shared their teachings with the Shipibo-Konibo people on how to navigate the rivers and lakes, and on living together through collaboration and mutual respect. These Inkas do not refer to the last rulers of Cusco, but identify “doctors of luminous wisdom” who inhabit the spiritual worlds. The merayas, human visionary doctors, are those who have the possibility – after long learning processes, which include prolonged diets for initiation into medicinal knowledge and bathing in the fountains of perfumed waters – of establishing interconnections between the times and spaces that are inhabited by the chaikonibos and humans. Through dreams, the Merayas receive the knowledge to live in balance and harmony.

This way of understanding the relationships that exist between spiritual beings, visionary sages and humans is part of the ancestral knowledge inherited by the artist Chonon Bensho from her ancestors. Her research into these wisdoms has allowed her to develop an artistic practice that renews discourses on the protection of Amazonian ecosystems, promotes respect for the ancestors in order to conserve and transmit this knowledge, and makes visible the urgency of reconfiguring contemporary understandings of territories and the relationships between the beings that inhabit them. The exhibition Jone Jonibo: The Spiritual Beings of Chonon Bensho brings together a series of drawings, paintings, embroideries and sculptures, carried out by the artist between 2018 and 2024, which addresses these diverse knowledges and traditional narratives. In this group of works, it is also possible to identify the presence of the diverse designs of the kené -maya kené, koros kené, xao kené, among others-, which reflect the interrelationships between beings of the Amazonian ecosystems and are a symbol of the cultural identity of the Shipibo-Konibo community to which the artist belongs. For Chonon Bensho, the kené is a poetic geometry that reflects a vibration common to all living beings and a natural ordering of existence.

The works in the exhibition show how family wisdoms nourish contemporary artistic practices and stimulate the development of individual affirmations. In this exhibition it is possible to identify themes such as the representation of the origin of the kené, the learning of the merayas and the affirmation of their links with spiritual beings, as well as the balance between beings and the complementation between dualities, also reflected in the kené. The works also recover the narratives about the “great flood” sent by the Inka to punish the bad habits of humans and which marks the separation between the eternal Inkas and humanity. Also present in the group of works is the story of Inin Niwe and the pure world of the eternal beings, a poetic novel, inspired by traditional narratives about initiation on the path of the ancestors, created by Pedro Favaron and illustrated by Chonon Bensho. In this way, the exhibition presents the artist’s proposal to deepen the understanding of the role of the spiritual owners of medicine and to emphasise the relevance of the medicinal legacy of the ancestors, which integrates the cultural and spiritual identity of the Shipibo-Konibo people.

Giuliana Vidarte
Curator