Chonon Bensho

Through her artistic practice, Chonon Bensho has advocated for protecting the critical equilibrium among the diverse elements of the Amazonian ecosystem . In her works, the artist looks to the knowledge of her ancestors, the Shipibo-Konibo people, to foreground the urgency of reconfiguring our contemporary understanding of the territory and this “sacred network of existence.”

Chonon Bensho is an indigenous artist from the Shipibo-Konibo people. She is a descendant of Onanya traditional medical sages and women who have preserved the artisan and artistic traditions of their ancestors. Since she was a child, she was raised in a traditional environment, in her own language, and cured with the medicinal plants used by people who want to become masters of Kené designs. She studied at the Eduardo Meza Saravia Artistic Training School, in the Yarinacocha district, from which she graduated in 2018 with a thesis on Kené designs.

Chonon develops an art with her own language in which the techniques of academic art converge harmoniously with the heritage of the ancient Shipibo artists. She has participated in various group exhibitions in the Ucayali region and has also published, academic research articles on her culture in prestigious indexed journals in Colombia and the United States. She is president of the Association of Artists and Sages of the Shipibo-Konibo people METSÁ.

When a Shipibo woman knows the customs of her grandmothers and continues to practice them, when she knows the different medicinal plants and with her bare feet on the ground that her parents walked, she is not lost in the world.

She is a person who knows where she comes from and intuits where she is going. In your dreams, you can converse with your ancestors and receive advice from them on how to live correctly and your union with the world in balance, able to live legitimately and promote the well-being of your family. One has to learn to live wisely despite the confusion and unrest of this century.

BIO

Chonon Bensho (Perú, 1992).

Chonon Bensho is an indigenous artist, from the Shipibo-Konibo people of the Peruvian Amazon. She is a descendant of wise traditional Onanya doctors and of women who have preserved the artisan and artistic traditions of their ancestors. As a child she was raised in a traditional environment, in her own language, and was cured with the medicinal plants used by people who want to become masters of kene designs (artistic expression of the people of the Pano linguistic family). In these geometric patterns is expressed the philosophical and spiritual vision of the indigenous nations, which always tends to the search for beauty and balance.

Chonon was born in the Native Community of Santa Clara de Yarinacocha, in the Ucayali region. She completed her professional studies at the Escuela Superior de Formación Artística Eduardo Meza Saravia, in the district of Yarinacocha, from which she graduated in December 2018 with an artist/ethnographic thesis on Kene designs.

Chonon has participated in several group exhibitions and in 2021 her first solo exhibition, entitled "Metsá Nete: the beautiful visionary world of Chonon Bensho", was held at the Alliance Française de Miraflores, in Lima (curator Christian Bendayán). Likewise, the British institution "Art from heart", chose her as Artist of the Month in February 2021. Also in September 2021 she had her first solo exhibition abroad, entitled "A River, a Snake, a Map in the Sky", which took place in the city of Basel, Switzerland, as part of the Culture Scapes art festival (curated by Kateryna Botanova).  In 2022 she was the winner of the National Painting Contest of the Central Bank of Reserves of Peru, one of the most important Peruvian art awards.

Together with her husband, Pedro Favaron, Chonon has conducted ethnographic research among her own relatives and on her own culture, and has published academic articles in various indexed journals in Colombia and the United States. Likewise, her pictorial and poetic work has been published in magazines in different countries.