Before time existed, a thought arose — Kahtiri, life — in the form of a woman, the great grandmother. She who thought and continues to think about life, created four rolls of thunder that organized matter, and a fifth, in her likeness, the great grandfather of the Universe. Together they created the guide to all time and started life with the great serpent and with many fish. Their wishful curiosities inaugurated the life of the forest animals.

Out of the desire to people the world, appeared the first men, who from the great grandfather received tools imbued with power; they went on accompanied by the first women, Amõ Numiã, who give their name to this exhibition. With the life that breathed in their wombs, these women creators bore two of the most important beings in Tukano ancestrality, giving rise to peoples, tongues, visions, and the organization of society.

This is a summary of many of the stories I have heard, read, brought together, and reworked over the years. Beyond being elements in a cosmovision, these are aspects of a Cosmopotency: an ongoing narrative of a world that continues to self-generate. By means of visuality, through colors and drawing, I weave dialogues with my kin, navigating this web of Cosmopotency and sending out arrows so that multiple forms of conceiving life can be recognized.

What Eurocentric culture calls “art” has no equivalent among my people. Nor does what I produce in the field of visuality obey the parameters of this category. The vibrant colors and rhythmic patterns of Hori do not produce figurative or abstract images but evoke a collective experience of aspects of existence that do not reveal themselves to the gaze. Hori is the vision manifested ever since the birth of kahpi, ayahuasca.

By evoking the Amõ Numiã, I reflect on the transformations in our time which reveal the destruction brought about by a misogynist, racist, colonial, and predatory culture. In this exhibition, which begins and ends with the first mothers of creation, I connect images of other women of primordial times. Indigenous women carry voices that open up paths and multiply relations.

Our voices echo a thought, life, Kahtiri.

Añu.

Daiara Tukano