AUSTIN, TX.- threads & patterns: living indigenous art of the americas brings together works from three Indigenous traditions of the Americas. Each piece in the exhibition carries meaning that predates Western art categories: these are objects of ceremony, maps of a cosmology, and transmissions of knowledge passed down through generations of makers.

The works are not documentation of a vanishing practice. They are the practice itself, ongoing and alive.

The Wixarika works are made by the Carrillo Bautista family, who live in Real de Catorce in the mountains of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Their father is a maracame, a Huichol shaman and healer. The yarn paintings and beaded sculptures they produce are built thread by thread, bead by bead, pressed into wax on wooden forms, each image encoding the Wixarika cosmovision: the sacred peyote, the blue deer spirit guide Kauyumari, the fire god Tatewari, the sun, the four cardinal points, and the ceremonies that hold these forces in relation. On the back of each piece, the artist writes, in his own hand, what the painting contains. These are not captions. They are part of the work.

The Shipibo Conibo tapestries come from families in the Ucayali River basin, where the Shipibo Conibo people have long expressed their healing songs, known as icaros, through geometric pattern. In Shipibo understanding, sound and pattern are the same thing. The intricate designs, known as kene, are not decorative but medicinal, each one encoding a specific vibration, a relationship with the plant world, a form of protection or healing that can be received visually as well as through song.

The gamá mochilas are hand-woven by Kogi Sanhas, the holy women and spiritual midwives of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. Made from agave-hemp plant with natural pigments drawn from tree bark, leaves, and roots, each bag takes one full moon cycle to weave. They have never been sold. The Kogi gifted these pieces to the Center for Shamanic Education and Exchange in gratitude for the Center's support of Kogi wisdom transmission. The Kogi, descendants of the Tairona whose culture flourished in the northern Colombian region one to two thousand years ago, are regarded as spiritual leaders among Indigenous communities across the Americas, sometimes called the "older brothers," guides to a knowledge that remains deeply aligned with the natural world. To encounter a gamá in a gallery is rare.





The exhibition arrives at a significant moment for Indigenous art on the world stage. Earlier this year, Shipibo artist Sara Flores became the first Indigenous artist to represent Peru at the Venice Biennale, presenting her Kené works at the Arsenale, and opened at White Cube New York in June. The lineage these tapestries belong to is the same lineage now being recognized at the highest levels of the international art world.

"What strikes me about these works is how they do not separate art from use," says Christina Hiltscher, Owner and Director of Unchained.Art Contemporary Gallery. "Every element has a function, a meaning, a relationship to something larger. Bringing them to Austin matters because this is not ethnography. These are living practices made by people who are here, creating, and still connecting."

"The visuals of these artworks represent the sacred symbols and spiritual meanings of Indigenous peoples from the deserts of Mexico, the jungle and river basins that feed the Amazon, and the high coastal mountains of Colombia. These pieces offer a healing that begins the moment they meet our eyes." - Mary Olivar, Vice President, Center for Shamanic Education and Exchange

The Center for Shamanic Education and Exchange is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with long-standing relationships with the Wixarika, Shipibo Conibo, and Kogi communities, supporting the transmission of spiritual knowledge, ceremony, and traditional practice from elders to the next generation.

Founded in Zurich in 2020 and now based in a historic Beaux-Arts building in downtown Austin, Unchained.Art Contemporary Gallery presents a curated program connecting artists from Austin, across the U.S., and internationally.