Santiago Yahuarcani: The Beginning of Knowledge
Curator Tour with Darren Pih with Community Garden Tour with Francine Hayfron.
📅 16 September 2025⏰1:00 - 3pm
📍the Whitworth
🎟️ Book your free tickets now
A special Art History Festival 2025 tour.
Join us for a curator tour of Santiago Yahuarcani: The Beginning of Knowledge with Darren Pih, curator of the exhibition, and Francine Hayfron, Cultural Park Keeper.
Darren will talk through some of the themes and artworks contained with in the exhibition, as well as insights into the show’s development. Francine will then take you on a walking tour of the talk Community Garden and how the garden is linking with the exhibition in the growing of dyes and medicinal plants. This tour will link both the exhibition and nature together.
About the Artist
Working from a remote Amazonian town in northern Peru, Santiago Yahuarcani creates large-scale, narrative-rich paintings exploring the relationship between the Uitoto people and the natural world.
Using natural pigments and materials, Yahuarcani's work exists outside of Western art history – instead harnessing the memories, history, and wisdom of his ancestors, the sacred knowledge of medicinal plants, the sounds of the jungle, and Uitoto myths that explain the multiple configurations of the universe.
Especially urgent in its retelling of the colonial extraction of natural resources and the enslavement of the Uitoto people during the Peruvian rubber boom, Yahuarcani’s art can be understood as an act of education and protest, vividly illustrating the natural scenery that once was.
Building on his presentation at the 60th Venice Biennale, The Beginning of Knowledge features more than 25 paintings from 2010 to the present, including new work and international loans.
About the venue
The Whitworth is a venue with level access throughout, and facilities to support you during your visit. Alongside this our visitor team will be on hand to assist you in the gallery. Find out more about planning your visit to the Whitworth and accessibility information for you.
If you’d like to speak to a team member about any access or additional needs, please get in touch with the gallery and we will be happy to assist you. Email whitworth@manchester.ac.uk or telephone 0161 275 7450.
The Whitworth art gallery and gardens is driven by a mission to work with communities to use art for positive social change, and actively addresses what matters most in people’s lives. We are proudly part of The University of Manchester, operating as a convening space between the University and the people of the city.
Image: Santiago Yahuarcani, Sin título (Untitled) 2021, natural pigments and acrylic on llanchama, 60 x 87 cm. © Santiago Yahuarcani. Photo: CRISIS Gallery
