IN PERSON

$80 members/$100 nonmembers

This is a limited-capacity workshop, with spots available on a first-come, first-served basis. To reserve your spot, please email hannah.yoo@arts.ucla.edu to receive the payment link and complete registration. Your participation will be confirmed upon payment. Please note that workshop fees are nonrefundable.

Shipibo-Konibo artist and cultural leader Olinda Silvano will conduct a hands-on workshop on kené, the intricate geometric design system of the Shipibo-Konibo people of the Peruvian Amazon. In collaboration with Erick (Ronin) Arias Silvano and Sadith Esther Silvano Inuma, Silvano will guide participants through drawing practices rooted in kené while sharing its meanings as a living language of memory, healing, and connection.

For the Shipibo-Konibo, kené patterns are not only visual forms but also pathways activated through sound, song, and intention. As Silvano paints, she sings, bringing her work into resonance as a multisensory experience. Participants will be invited to engage with kené as an embodied practice that connects drawing, listening, and cultural knowledge.

Silvano will discuss how kené is created using materials drawn from the Amazon and how these natural resources are central to Shipibo-Konibo artistic and spiritual practices. Through demonstration and conversation, she will share how these patterns move across textiles, painting, and mural work, carrying ancestral knowledge into contemporary contexts.

Based in the urban Indigenous community of Cantagallo in Lima, Silvano has built a vital bridge between ancestral memory and contemporary art, using her practice to affirm and activate Shipibo-Konibo cultural knowledge in public and institutional spaces. Her work has been presented internationally, including at the Montevideo Biennial (2025), the Bienal de la Amazonía (2025), and ARCO Madrid (2019, 2025).

This workshop will offer an immersive introduction to kené as both artistic practice and living system of relations, inviting participants into a space where drawing, song, and cultural memory come together, while also serving as a preview of Silvano’s mural installation, Paths of Memory, Paths of Healing: Shipibo-Konibo Kene Art, opening in the Fowler Museum’s Intersections Gallery on Friday, November 6.

This program is co-presented by the Fowler Museum, the CMRS–Center for Early Global Studies, the UCLA Latin American Institute, and the Consulate General of Peru in Los Angeles