Brus Rubio Churay
“Brus Rubio’s work has gained international recognition for the profound description of tribal life in both the daily management of the jungle environment and the collective tribal experience that resurfaces in dreams, visions and legends.”Having been brought up the traditional way by his Bora/Huitoto family, Rubio’s ancestral knowledge is intimate.
In addition, Rubio has interacted with anthropologists and his paintings often focus on current social and environmental issues.
Rubio is an icon because he stands out among the self-taught artists of the Amazon.His peculiar style adapts expressive figuration, subtle form and color and an elaborate interrelation between the symbolic and compositional elements of painting.
Gallery of Works
Biography
He was born in the community of Pucaurquillo on the banks of the Ampiyacu River, an affluent of the Amazon River, where two ethnic groups converge: Huitoto – Murui by his father, Bora by mother.
He paints with natural pigments (Guisador, Achiote, Huito) extracted from leaves, seeds, earth, fruits and installs some his images on llanchama (bark). For three years he worked in a Maloka (Inigenous Community), collecting information of the wisdom of his homeland and was interacting with the knowledge of anthropologist Jorgue Gashe.
From this collaboration a collective exhibition emerged: “Birth of Huitoto-Bora Art“ in 2002 on the rescue and valorization of the Amazonian people in the gallery of the Continental Bank of Iquitos, where Brus proposes the vision of his community in an interactive way, thus unraveling a profound, deep sense that confirms, as the author himself says:
“We are not lost yet. We exist. I still exist“.
In 2010 he holds the exhibition “Invisible Jungle” in the Art Gallery “Visuals“ at Ricardo Palma University,Lima, simultaneously with the Cultural Center Irapay, Iquitos (Peru). His proposal is a Huitoto still life in the more orthodox terms of western still life, replacing the elements in the bowl with those of its environment, the fishing with Barbasco and descriptions of everyday life.
Brus takes an powerful intellectual leap in dichotomized communication. Where a man of his ethnic group, (decoration and clothing) and the manguaré, (instrument of communication by excellence) have been fragmented and recomposed into a clear metaphor of the failures of perception.
In front of these works, one must make an effort to avoid the dangers of a strictly anthropological or political point of view.
In 2011 the self-taught artist obtained the second place of the XIV Contest (Nacional Pasaporte) for an artist to go to France, organized by the Alianza Francesa and the Embassy of France, where he realised an exhibition in the Jean Briances Edifor Gallery in Paris.
His proposal is not limited to testimonial narration of community life or the events of mythology, but he moves towards a recreation that is installed on a support of compositional structure that shows his knowledge and information of painting in western culture, which advanced towards his people and its pairs, not such a long time ago, dominating but not crushing that proper and traditional axis that signify his cosmic understanding and its indissoluble fusion with nature.
In 2012 he held an individual exhibition “La Selva Invisible” in the gallery Maison des Associations du 15è arrondissement in Paris (FRANCE). 2012. In 2015 the Museo de Arte of Lima decided to acquire two works for an permanent exhibition. In addition, he participated in the “Pachamama“ of the forty-ninth Festival of popular Smithsonian traditions in a collective exhibition in Washington D. C.
In 2015,in his exhibition “Tránsitos. Pucaurquillo to Paris“, one way return, at the “Centro Cultural Inca Garcilasco“ of the Ministry of Foreign Relations in Lima,Peru he displayed his audacity as a visual hunter the artist has consigned in his recent works detailes of his personal cartography.
Lima and Paris, places that make up his artistic itinerary, are scenarios of situations, encounters and aesthetic confrontations brought to the painting.
Rubio Churay offers us in Amazon Passport a daring composition that exotises the Parisian landscape by surrounding the Eiffel Tower with a paradisiacal and exuberant Amazonian environment. The presence of two “Pucuneros“ or blowpipe hunters resignifies a landmark of Western modernity with regional symbols and at the same time reshapes the local surroundings, converting Paris into a tropical city.
Its striking,deliberate imprint of light and color that floods the Parisian sky as well as the animals that populate the whole composition, toucans, pelejos, parrots and red dolphins supported by a couple of children and others who dance in a row around a transformed Seine river.
In 2016 he participated in the international fair of ArtLima, represented for the Bufeo Gallery. That same year he participated in the silent exhibition: New Skins of the Amazon organized by the Embassy of Peru in Havana organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Republica de Cuba. Organized by Bufeo Amazonía + Arte. Carmen Montilla Gallery – Cuba.
In 2017 he participates in the prestigious ArteBa Foundation of Argentina with Bufeo Amazonia + Arte gallery being winners of the Barrio Joven award. Currently, it has an individual exhibition ka + Aillocojofomo – Nuestra Casa Grande in the Gallery Amazonian Space in El Monumental,Callao,Lima, Peru.
