Visionary Art with San Pedro and Ayahuasca in Ecuador, in dialogue with the Kichwa world

Abstract

This research addresses visionary practices in contemporary Ecuadorian art, focusing on their relationship with the ritual ingestion of San Pedro (Echinopsis pachanoi) and Ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi). From a perspective grounded in animist ontologies, which understand nature as a vast web of interconnected beings with interiority, the study analyzes how these master plants function as catalysts of differentiated states of consciousness for artists and, to some extent, as co-authors of their works. Such experience facilitates the materialization of the ineffable and the emergence of memories, both individual and collective, which are manifested in the work of the artists Marcelo Aguirre, Inty Muenala, Elías Mamallacta, Miguel Varea, and Angélica Alomoto in dialogue with the Kichwa world. In their work, visions stand as a self-ethnographic praxis that interacts in complex ways with two distinct indigenous cosmopolitics, those of the highlands and the Amazon. For this purpose, visual analysis and in-depth interviews with the creators were used.