Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe (Sheroana, Venezuela, 1971) is an indigenous artist living in Platanal, a Yanomami community in Venezuela’s Alto Orinoco region. Hakihiiwe’s experience in the field of creation began in 1992, when the artist learned to produce handmade paper with native fibres such as Shiki and Abacá under the tutelage of Mexican artist Laura Anderson Barbata.
In recent years, Hakihiiwe has been developing what could be described as an unusual atlas of animals, plants, and elements that represent the identity and culture that inhabits the artist’s own Yanomami community. Synthetic and minimalist drawings on cloth or paper that appear as a living reflection of his community’s vast and intense relationship with the landscape and ecosystem that surrounds it; a relationship with nature forged from a fusion therewith.
Through his works, Hakihiiwe defies various binarisms, including human-animal, life-death, body-spirit, and inside-outside. Through the representation of caterpillars, leaves, and trunks of different plants and trees, bird feathers and decorative elements, Hakihiiwe shares a highly-personal interpretation of the Yanomami community’s identity and tradition with audiences, in an exercise that not only solidifies the memory of the Pori Pori people and records a somewhat autobiographical context, but also recognises and vindicates a community based on a deep respect for its surrounding ecosystem.
Recently, Hakihiiwe's work has been the subject of review among international institutions, with the artist participating in important events that include The Yanomami Struggle at The Shed New York, USA, curated by Thyago Nogueira (2023), the 59th Biennale di Venezia (2022), the Kathmandu Triennale 2077 in Nepal (2022), ‘Les Vivants (Living Worlds)’ at the Cartier Foundation (2022), the XXXIII Sydney Biennale (2022), ‘ReVisión: Art in the Americas’ at the Denver Art Museum (2021), and ‘And if I devoted my life to one of its feathers?’ at the Kunsthalle Wien in Austria (2021). Prior to this, Hakihiiwe also participated in the Berlin Biennale (2019) and the XII Shanghai Biennale (2018).
Hakihiiwe has also shown individually at recent exhibitions, including: Thororo nasipe re u no wawe wawe, at the Galería Elba Benítez, Madrid, (2022); Watori, Ana Mas Projects, Barcelona, (2021); Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, at Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2021); and Urihi theri, Lissabon Kunsthalle. Lisbon, Portugal (2021). He has also taken part in collective exhibitions, including ‘Amazonía’, curated by Berta Sichel at the CAAC – Seville Centre for Andalusian Art (2021) and ‘Uma História Natural das Ruínas’ at Pivo Sao Paulo, curated by Catalina Lozano (2021).
The artist’s works are included among important collections, such as that of the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the British Museum London, the Cartier Foundation in France, the Lima Museum of Art, Mexico’s Colección Conaculta, the Kadist Collection in San Francisco (USA), the Museum of Fine Arts and Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires, the Columbia College of Art in Chicago, and the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection in New York.