Artists

Sara Flores is a Peruvian artist living and working in Yarinacocha, Peru. A member of the Shipibo-Konibo people of the Peruvian Amazon, she is one of the foremost living practitioners of Kené — an ancient geometric design system central to the artistic expression, cosmovision, and spiritual life of her culture. Born in 1950 in the native community of Tambomayo, she was given the Shipibo birth name Soi Biri, meaning "well done" or "precisely drawn." At the age of fourteen she began her apprenticeship in Kené under the guidance of her mother, who would gather ipobekené leaves and press them onto her daughter's eyelids so that she could better receive the designs. The practice is passed down matrilineally through generations — not through formal instruction but through presence, through living it together — and Flores now continues this tradition in collaboration with her own daughters.

Flores works on tucuyo, a canvas made from wild cotton, applying dyes prepared from native trees and botanicals gathered from her surrounding environment: bark blended from river delta and highland trees to produce a deep black, leaves of the Amí for purple, fruit of the Achiote for red, root of the Guisdor for yellow. Her compositions are rendered freehand, without preparatory sketches, guided by what the Shipibo call shinai picotai — "the hand goes by itself and inspiration emerges." The resulting labyrinthine configurations map rivers, summon the serpentine energy of the cosmic anaconda Ronín, and give form to the visionary experiences of ayahuasca ceremony. In Shipibo belief, Kené carries curative properties: ill-health arises from a disharmony of aesthetics, and orderly design restores balance. In 1976, Flores co-founded Maroti Shobo, the first women's cooperative among the Shipibo people, still active today.

Flores is represented by White Cube and is currently representing Peru at the 61st Venice Biennale with the project De otros mundos (From Other Worlds), curated by Issela Ccoyllo and Matteo Norzi, on view through November 22, 2026 — making her the first Indigenous artist to represent Peru at Venice. Recent solo exhibitions include Bakish Mai, White Cube Bermondsey, London, 2025; Non Nete. A Dream for an Indigenous Nation, Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), 2025; and Sara Flores, White Cube Paris, 2023. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate London, the Hammer Museum, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, among others.