Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how indigenous artists reflect on their migration experience and urban life. It shows that an engagement with art, artists and exhibitions can connect indigenous' perspectives, demands and hopes to larger audiences, impact policies and boost place-making and migration research.

Paper long abstract:

In 1999 the Shipibo Community of Cantagallo was created consolidating a process of migration to Peru's capital. Shipibo people moved from the Amazonian region in search of better conditions of life, work and security in the face of terrorism. In 2016, a fire destroyed a large part of the urban community making evident the precarious situation in which urban Shipibo lived and enlivening their demands. Indigenous artists and art have played a crucial role in Shipibo´s experiences of migration, place-making and political demands.

As part of my new research, "A Collaborative Approach to the Aesthetical Political Dimension of Amazonian Contemporary Art", in this paper I explore how Shipibo art has participated in the construction/reconstruction of Cantagallo and in the inscription of indigenous epistemologies in the urban landscape. Second, and with attention to the artworks of Elena Valera (Bahuan Jisbe), Harry Pinedo (Ini Metsa) and Olivia Silvano, I show how these artists express affects, agendas and hopes about their mobility and new urban experiences, reflecting on the possibilities that an engagement with art and artists' self-reflexivity posits for migration research and policy-making. Third, it reflects on the potential that art, exhibitions and urban interventions have had in building awareness of indigenous' experiences and demands in the larger Lima and in amplifying Shipibos' claims for a real pluricultural city.