Otorongo

Description

This jaguar, or otorongo in Quechua, was created as part of Vasquez Yui’s series The Council of the Mother Spirits of the Animals, which advanced a spiritual understanding of ecology. The feline confronts our human gaze, as if acknowledging the devastating losses of habitat in the Amazon Jungle. The cat’s spotted fur is elaborately rendered in finely incised and painted patterns called kené. These designs represent worldviews and energy pathways and can be evoked in song to promote healing.

Provenance

Celia Vasquez Yui (Shipibo, born 1960), Pucallpa, Peru, 2020; consigned to Salon 94, New York, 2022; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2022.

Otorongo

Celia Vasquez Yui

2020

Accession Number

263970

Medium

Coil-built clay with pre-fire slip-paint and vegetal resins

Dimensions

58.5 × 33.1 × 44.5 cm (23 × 13 × 17 1/2 in.)

Classification

ceramics

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Arts of the Americas Discretionary Fund