Sara Flores is a Shipibo-Conibo artist from the Peruvian Amazon, where she lives and works. The Shipibo-Conibo people are the second largest Indigenous group of Peru. Flores’s paintings on tocuyo, a canvas made from wild cotton, expand on the Shipibo-Conibo visual language, known as kené. Traditionally, kené is practiced by women—through painting, embroidery, or weaving—and transmitted across generations according to a matrilineal principle, usually from mother to daughter. The intricate geometric designs of kené are not simply decorative; they constitute a visual language that embodies the Shipibo-Conibo’s worldview, their spiritual beliefs, and connection to the natural world. The practice of kené is the result of a delicate balance between a deferential engagement with ancestral cosmology and an imperative of personal innovation, which Flores excels at.

The mazelike motifs of Untitled map the interconnected networks that underlie the Shipibo-Conibo worldview. Bold black lines form a symmetrical design that frames a smaller motif composed of finer black lines, colored nodes, and small leaves. Flores’s intricate hand-drawn patterns are realized without preparatory sketches, using handmade vegetal dyes that are produced from the native flora of the Amazon. Each of her designs is one of a kind. They serve as a visual manifesto of her people’s ethical commitment to live in harmony with nature and in accordance with a principle of reciprocity, and to sustain forms of kinship that extend beyond the human to encompass the animal, the vegetal, the land, and the spirits alike.