Chonon Bensho

Chonon Bensho (Pucallpa, 1992) is a Shipibo-Konibo multimedia artist and poet who revitalizes the Kené, an ancestral tradition of abstract patterns inspired by visions from entheogenic plants such as ayahuasca, which possess healing powers and are traditionally passed down from mother to daughter. Trained in both Indigenous cosmology and fine arts (she graduated in 2018), Bensho creates large embroidered canvases that express the harmonious coexistence between humans and the Amazonian environment, depicting mythological beings, animals, and plants as a metaphor for the inseparability of all living beings. In 2022, she became the first Indigenous woman to win the Banco de Reserva del Perú Painting Prize, and her work has been exhibited at the Alliance Française in Lima and in Basel, Switzerland, in addition to being part of the collections of the MASP and the MALI.