In the framework of our group exhibition The Projective Drawing, acclaimed US-percussionist Billy Martin is joined by Austrian bass clarinetist Susanna Gartmayer for a special musical performance interpreting Sara Flores‘s work in the exhibition.

Sara Flores was born in 1950 in the indigenous community of Tanbo Mayo, in the Loreto region of the Peruvian Amazon, where at 14 started her apprenticeship in the arts under the guidance of her mother. Imbued with intention, her artistic practice is distinguished by the intricate design and astonishing exactitude.

The Quené through which Sara projects and recasts her own universe is a complex artistic genre moving from an almost cybernetic codified system tapping into and representing the substrate of existence, to a healing design or design medicine, to a musical pattern accompanying the icaro of a shaman in a ceremony. The way the patterns and the repetition and variation motifs, hand-drawn in free form, without the aid of prepared patterns or computer modeling, emerge to fit the canvas, points to the mind-bending way in which these patterns are stored mnemonically and mapped back on to the canvas through an embodied practice, making it seem almost like neuronal mapping, an exercise in connectomics.

Sara Flores utilizes a variety of polychrome natural dyes that she personally prepares from autochthone flora such as the leaves of the Amí for the purple, the fruit of Achiote for the red, the bark of the Yacushapana for the black, the root of the Guisador for the yellow – just to name a few of the plants her practice requires establishing relationships with.

Link to event website.