Graciela Arias Salazar
During my art education, I admired Pablo Amaringo’s detailed work. When I finished my studies I saw that the outside world was not as simple as I had beleaved.
I admired suggestions like those of Christian Bendayan and followed his exhibitions, attracted by the daring content of his works. I have the feeling that I have not yet reached that level of courage or daring and therefore it is very liberating for me to follow him.
To deal with the depiction of the female and mythological themes of the Amazon I allow myself to use tools to manifest the problems that I can see in my own context, in order to raise my voice and liberate them. Among these negative situations I find the exaggerated sexualization of young women in Pucallpa today.
In my work “La Virgen de Capinuri”, for example, I would like to point out the contradictions of a society that wants to show the apparent purity of young women, but at the same time uses them as sexual symbols. That’s why I choose the capinuri, which is a natural branch of a tree with the form of the phallus, as a tool to challenge this dual morality.
For me Amazonia is the mother that protects and reproduces wellbeing. The Spiritual World of Plants which I represent in the form of animals and female figures, allow me to say that every element in the jungle is an energy that sends us a message and tries to reflect what we do.
I want it to contribute to the preservation of this knowledge and customs of people living in the jungle. The Amazon region, which we have not forgotten, especially the intimate relationship that can be maintained with nature in these times, can not understood by many Peruvian citizens, as well as by people all over the world who have not come into contact with Amazonian nature.
Gallery of Works
Biography
In 1980, at the age of only 2, her family moved to the City of Pucallpa (Ucayali region) to protect itself from the conflict erupting in her hometown of Ayacucho,due to a period of terrorism and its ever-growing violence. In 2001, she graduated from the Superior School of Artistic Formation, Eduardo Meza Saravia, and since then she paints the world around her with great attention to detail, meticulousness and virtuosity. With a very precise irony, elevating the female sex, she seeks to reevaluate the craft and to preserve and maintain the beliefs and customs of the Amazonian world through mythology.
Finalist of the 3rd and 5th BCR National Painting Contest and winner of the PACA Amazonic Contemporary Art Award of the Ministry of Culture in Loreto. She has participated in more than a dozen national and international collective exhibitions, including EI milagro Verde / History of Painting in the Amazon, Luis Miro Room Quesada Garland, 2012;
“The land where God did not obscure his creation”, Pata Gallery, China Art Museum, Shanghai and the Milenium Art Museum, Beijing, 2016. Participation in the auction of MALI (Museo de Arte Lima) in summer 2016; also in Bena Kene / New Paths / Art Shipibo Conibo and The time when humans and animals were indistinguishable Galerie Bufeo, 2016 or 2017; Seeds of the gods / Entheogenic art of the Peruvian Amazon, Manege Palace, Russia, 2018; She also participated in the exhibition “Living Ideas in the Air” (at lcpna Miraflores, Curatorship of Giuliana Vidarte, 2018; “Everything that sounds in the forest”: Contemporary Art of the Peruvian Amazon, Pensacola Museum of Art, Miami 2018 Salon visionary art Amaru Runa in the context of VII International Biennale “Indigenous Art, 2018). Her first individual exhibition; “Creator of Dreams” was featured in Sala Raul Porras Barrenechea of the Miraflores community in 2015. (with the support of the curators of Shapshico, Giuliana Vidarte, Alfredo Villar and Christian Bendayán). as well as in the Gallery lcpna Pucallpa, 2018, and then in the gallery Icpna, Miraflores, Lima Peru.
