Venuca Evanan

Venuca Evanán continues and transforms the artistic heritage of the Sarhua community in southern Peru’s Ayacucho region. Using natural earth pigments and bird feathers, she has developed the traditional Sarhua Tables painting techniques over more than twenty years. She experiments beyond tradition by applying these methods to surfaces such as wood, stone, and textiles. Breaking barriers as one of the first women to engage in this male-dominated practice, Evanán’s work broadens its themes to explore intimate and critical social issues. Her art speaks to community customs, feminine identity, eroticism, gender violence, LGBTQ+ struggles, and the lived realities of migrant women. Through her practice, she honors and elevates the cultural legacy of Andean women while weaving contemporary feminist narratives into a centuries-old tradition. Her compositions often merge finely detailed figurative scenes with symbolic motifs and text, creating visual narratives that are at once personal and communal. Evanán’s process involves meticulous layering of color, texture, and iconography, allowing each piece to serve as both a record of memory and a statement of resistance. By integrating traditional imagery with contemporary issues, she ensures that Sarhua painting remains a living, evolving language—rooted in ancestral knowledge yet responsive to the urgencies of the present. ...