Santiago Yahuarcani: The Birth of Knowledge - The Whitworth - Review

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ 

In the midst of dissertation writing, I have taken time out to visit the new exhibition at The Whitworth. Forming part of the 2025 Manchester International Festival, this is the first international solo exhibition of Uitoto artist Santiago Yahuarcani: ‘The Birth of Knowledge’.

I enter from the west side of the gallery. The exhibition title is emblazoned large on the separating wall. Before engaging with the works, I make my way to a panel of text, seeking information on the artist and his work.

Santiago Yahuarcani, born 1960, Pebas, Peru, is the leader of the Aimeni Clan of the Uitoto people. His work acts as a form of storytelling, using his art to keep the stories and beliefs of his people alive. Working with natural pigments, Yahuarcani paints on llanchama, a bark cloth made from the renadi tree. His goal, it seems, is to preserve indigenous knowledge and the Uitoto cosmology.

The exhibition is stated to be organised thematically. Large scale works hang in the central hallway. The right side of the gallery contains a handful of thematic blocks. On the left, a cinema box, showing excerpts from El Canto de las Mariposas  by Nuria Frigola Torrent. Interestingly, only half of the available space on the left wing of the gallery is used. Part of the space is blocked off with seamless white walls. For comparison, this exhibition uses 4/5 of the available space previously used by the Women in Revolt! exhibition.

Soundtracking the entire experience, courtesy of the film, are sounds from the Amazon rainforest, mixed with soundbites speaking Uitoto and Spanish. Beneath this all, disquieting synths and drum beats. Divorced from the context of the film, it is an unfortunately stereotypical soundscape, the buzz of insects, birdcalls, an emotive documentary soundtrack. The sound, carried throughout the gallery, has the peculiar effect of making the artworks seem further Othered. At first, I thought it was a cheap touristy trick – pump in rainforest audio to construct an experience that a Western audience expects. Pair indigenous art with stereotypical sounds. This was not the case, yet – as a first impression – it remains a notable aspect of the exhibition.

Yahuacani’s work makes use of a lot of shared characters, symbolic repetitions, building up a comprehensive and cohesive visual language of Uitoto cosmology. Much of his work deals with the importance of plants – especially Ampiri, sacred tabaco, who’s spirit appears anthropomorphically in large tapestry-esque works.  

Quotes from the artist are printed on the walls, supplementing gallery text. They are very evocative: “The time of rubber was the time of the weeping of blood”. The connected section of the gallery deals in artworks processing the Putumayo Genocide. Violent, harrowing imagery fills the canvasses. The figure of the pink river dolphin takes on a new meaning, becoming representative of the untrustworthy outsider, a shapeshifter looking to exploit indigenous people. Yahuarcani’s cosmology intertwines with his family history. Mythological fragments allow the artist to process and represent atrocities.

The Putumayo genocide covers upwards of 30,000 deaths at the hands of the Peruvian Amazon Company during the rubber boom towards the end of the 19^th century. Text in the gallery doesn’t shy away from this history, specifically stating the culpability of British Companies. Yahuarcani’s grandfather survived the genocide. The sole survivor of the Aimeni clan.

The works are rightfully violent, threatening, and full of monsters. They convey a strong sense of pain, persecution and fear. They are disturbing works, doubly so thanks to the evocation of spirituality. Physically, the pieces leap from the wall. The llachama curls in such a way that it seeks to escape its framing. While the works are pinned to custom built back boards, their corners are left to bend and coil away from the walls. Perhaps this is a comment on the confining presentation of indigenous art in a western setting, a building named after a Victorian weapons inventor.

 A corner of this room responds to the covid-19 pandemic. It rightfully highlights the disproportional impact of the pandemic on indigenous communities. However, a text-based work juxtaposing Western science terminology with family alternative medication sticks out sorely. While its purpose is recognisable – illuminating indigenous responses to illness – on the surface it uses the same playbook as anti-vaxxer, science sceptic rhetoric. Even if the purpose is to platform ‘The richness of indigenous medicinal practice that Western science does not know’, and fully aware of the horrors inflicted on minority populations in the name of science, I am uncomfortable with this work and with the equivocation between modern medicine and traditional medicine. Perhaps this is a product of my positionality as white-British. I would be interested to discuss this if anyone feels differently.

Origin of the Force

In the next room, snippets of Uitoto myth contextualise the imagery of the artworks. We see works related to creativity, to agriculture, to creation. One stand out is Origin of the Force. This work was created specifically for the exhibition. Is the front and centre use of an English word - 'eclipse' - an exercise in pandering to an Anglocentric audience? I would argue not, since the exhibition will be later shown at Musee Universitario del Chopo and the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo.

In the final space, the documentary. While the rainforest soundscape has soundtracked – and conditioned – my experience so far, when contextualised with images it makes much more curatorial sense. The documentary follows Yahuacani and his family and includes parallel imagery of their current life and archival images from the Putumayo genocide. The unsettling background music functions perfectly to reiterate the gravity and horror of the genocide. Clear parallels are made between the figures in Yahuacani’s work and the people in the archival photos, neatly tying together the history, art, and culture on display.

The documentary is mesmerising. Every person who entered the room stayed for an entire loop of the footage. It is powerful work and beautifully contextualises and emboldens Yahuarcani’s own work throughout the gallery.

Overall, ‘The Beginning of Knowledge’ is a powerful and sobering display of art, deeply connected to an intriguing cosmology and a brutal history. Each of the works carries a strong character and – while some are stronger than others – they all demand the visitors attention. Coupled with Frigula Torrent’s documentary, this is a cohesive and powerful experience. However the presence of the soundscape and the context of The Whitworth grant the exhibition another layer of unease. You can’t help feeling like a tourist. Maybe this is the point. The Uitoto stories are continued and conveyed effectively, and The Whitworth has played a role in bringing them to rest of the world. Perhaps that is all that matters.

Santiago Yahuarcani: The Beginning of Knowledge is on display at The Whitworth until 4 January 2026 and is free to enter.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆