Amazonian Artistic Traditions

Ayahuasca has inspired Amazonian artistic traditions of spectacular beauty. A primary distinction can be drawn between the realism of mestizo art exemplified by the late Pablo Ameringo and the more abstract native traditions. The native traditions are hesitant to represent the sacred directly. For this reason they have produced a geometric art in some ways analogous to the iconoclastic art of islam, Judaism or some forms of Christianity. Yet Runa reasons for avoiding realistic representations of the sacred differ significantly from monotheistic reasons. In Runa thinking the withdrawal of the previous humans into their present plant and animal form was necessary to make the world habitable. If the walls between species were to break down causing biodiversity to collapse into a single human form we would destroy each other competing for the same resources and the world would end. The leafy, furry, feathery, forms of other species function like clothes to hide the intimacy of a humanity that should remain secret. Representing their realistic human form displays to gawking eyes an intimacy that should remain hidden. It could awaken a dangerous desire provoking an intimacy that crosses species boundaries causing sickness, death , or even the collapse of biodiversity. The most well known west Amazonian artistic traditions are the Shipibo tradition of the Ucayali and the Shuar/Zaparo/Kichwa traditions of Pastaza (a tributary of the Ucayali). Shipibo art is characterized by geometric mazes. As multivalent symbols these mazes are said to represent several things at once. First they represent the peculiar branch structure of the ayahuasca vine.