Issue # 26 Florence Goupil

‘Shipibo-Konibo: dialogue with plants’

How could we define the notion of collectivity or from where to conceive it? What is it that allows us to think or imagine beyond ourselves? Beyond our [inherited] history, is there something that determines us as a society today or, perhaps, as Peruvians beyond the national identity card? When asked if there is a common ground to identify for a human group, Wittgenstein would answer: no, there isn´t. What managed to prompt a connection between people could be what the philosopher called "family airs", which refers to a certain resemblance between the members of a clan based on relationships. Nothing in the universe is equal to anything else, furthermore no one is the same the minute that just left. For Toni Negri (2016) the idea of the collective is always a production, it is regulated, transformed, or simply produced. For this reason, the author considers that the idea of the collective is a resource only insofar as it is the product of human labor, within the framework of the capitalist regime traversed by power relations. Whereas Judith Butler (2017) considers that vulnerability is what characterizes humanity, as our bodily existence depends on human and non-human support systems; that being said, we need others to survive.

While the organization is the spontaneous result of the interaction between two or more people, being Peruvian is something that is always being built. That is to say, there is nothing that defines Peruvians in an essential way, but there is Peruvianess in practice. There is no Peruvian way of being, as being is always under construction, always becoming. It is unwise to reduce the common to a historical inheritance, since this is culturally given or acquired. Nor would it be correct to reduce it by belonging to a certain territory, since conceptions of land or territory vary between different worldviews. For example, the affiliation with the land in indigenous communities from their cosmogony and the practices of good neighbors is far from the Western conception of property or extractive practice. Under a colonial heritage that has insisted on sustaining gaps (social, economic, cultural) and under a neoliberal system that has imposed on us the idea that the individual can fend for himself, placing individuality - disguised as independence, entrepreneurship and self-development— as a value and weakening the idea of ​​community, group or union, as has been seen throughout history, the question should be reconsidered: from where can we envision the idea of collectiveness?

‘Shipibo-konibo: dialogue with the plants’ by the French-Peruvian photographer Florence Goupil (Lima, 1990) was part of the group show ´The Possibility of The Common´ curated for PaseoLab #2 at Galería del Paseo / Lima. ‘Shipibo-konibo: dialogue with plants’ consists of a series of photographs that portray the knowledge and traditions of the members of various Shipibo-konibo communities in the department of Ucayali (Peru), around native plants. It is a photographic project carried out in 2020 during the first months of the covid-19 pandemic in which Florence Goupil, accompanied by the Shipibo-Konibo teacher Gabriel Senencina, begins a trip that starts from the community of Cantagallo (Lima) and continues towards the Peruvian Amazon. Thus, the photographer is introduced among the various Shipiblo-Konibo communities to record how these - organized under the so-called Matico Command - dealt with covid-19 through the medicinal use of native plants such as matico, eucalyptus, tobacco leaves, among others, in order to control the symptoms of the virus and keep the body oxygenated.

Goupil's images not only represent the extensive knowledge of Shipibo healers around these plants, but also the close connections with the Amazonian biodiversity, which they also protect. Each image tells the story of one of its members, while warning of the danger that both traditional medicine and the community itself run due to the vulnerability in which they find themselves due to the abandonment of the State, deforestation in the hands of illegal loggers, the advance of drug trafficking, as well as the ravages of the pandemic.

Butler, Judith (2017) “Vulnerabilidad corporal, coalición y la política de la calle” en Nómadas 46, abril 2017. https://bit.ly/3toJQ5t Negri, Toni (2016) “El común como modo de producción” en revista Transversales 38, agosto 2016. https://bit.ly/3cH2TkC

Luisa Fernanda Lindo

Luisa Fernanda Lindo

Curator, writer and cultural manager. She has a degree in Letters from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and a Master's in Curatorial Studies from the University of Navarra (Spain). She has received various scholarships and residencies such as the Carolina Foundation Graduate Scholarship 2018-2019; Scholarship for Excellence in Special Programs for Artists AMEXCID / SRE (Mexico City, 2015); Artistic Residency grant from SEGIB and Casa de Velásquez (Madrid, 2015); Iberescena Fund for Artistic Creation in Residence (Bogotá, 2012); among others. She has published three poetry books and two children's books. Her poetic and narrative work is part of various anthologies. She is the Founder and director of SUERO, a space for reflection, creation, and exhibition of contemporary art. (www.instagram.com/dame_suero)