Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe

Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe (b. 1972, Alto Orinoco, Venezuela) is an artist from the Yanomami community of Pori Pori, in the Amazon region of Venezuela. Hakihiiwe began making paper from natural fibres in the 1990s, a skill he learned by studying with the Mexican artist Laura Anderson Barbata. The artist’s work now consists primarily of drawings and paintings on handmade paper. He draws from his ancestral knowledge of the signs and symbols of Yanomami culture, and their decorative application in basketry and body painting for ritual ceremonies. His work forms a rapidly growing visual lexicon, or library, of Yanomami visual culture. Hakihiiwe’s drawings and paintings reveal his beliefs, rites and traditions as well as his close relationship to the natural world.

Following his first exhibition in Caracas in 2010, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe has exhibited in the United States and Latin America, as well as in Europe at the Venice Biennale (2022) and at the Biennale of Sydney (2022). In 2022, he also participated in the “Les Vivants” exhibition organised by the Fondation Cartier in Lille, and in the 2023 exhibition, “The Yanomami Struggle” at the Shed in New York.