Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe

In the early 1990s, he met Mexican artist Laura Anderson Barbata, who taught him the art of making paper by hand. Together they founded the project Yanomami Owëmamotima, of which its first books were written, illustrated and published as part of a collective community experience. Hakihiiwe’s drawings, paintings and silkscreen prints on paper and fabric offer a highly personal interpretation of the Yanomami tradition and identity. He begins by sketching drawings inspired by his daily observations in the forest into notebooks. He then paints or prints his works in a workshop in Caracas on paper especially made with tree or plant fibres from his native land. These trace patterns, shapes and “special signs” of the Amazon rainforest are inspired by the knowledge of medicinal plants, ancestral tales of animals and spirits, shamanic songs and traditional body painting, of which he created a systematic inventory during the 2000’s.

Following his first exhibition in Caracas in 2010, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe has exhibited in the United States and Latin America, as well as in Europe at the Venice Biennale (2022) and at the Biennale of Sydney (2022). In 2022, he also participated in the Les Vivants exhibition organised by the Fondation Cartier in Lille, and in the 2023 exhibition, The Yanomami Struggle at the Shed in New York.