Seeking the Origin

Artist’s country of origen: Colombia
Materials: Mambe, wito, and oil on canvas
Size: 90 x 150 cm
Year: 2024

In Seeking the Origin, Aimema Úai evokes the memory of his grandparents and the path that connects his territory to ancestral knowledge. The work is part of the Caminos (íio) series, in which painting becomes a gesture of spiritual search and return to his Murui-Muina roots. From his place of origin —La Chorrera, between the Putumayo and Caquetá rivers— the Murui-Muina and other Amazonian peoples have resisted in order to preserve the jíbina or koka, the sacred plant that helps care for the world and maintain its natural balance. However, with the arrival of Catholic evangelizers after the rubber genocide, the demonization of the plant began. Decades later, during the cocaine boom, its spiritual meaning was again distorted. Despite these ruptures, within the mambeadero —a space for word, listening, and teaching— ancestral knowledge about the proper use of the plant has been preserved. Today, mambe, the fine powder resulting from mixing toasted and ground coca leaves with the ashes of yarumo —a plant and tree considered sacred by Amazonian peoples—, reaffirms itself as a symbol of strength and cultural continuity: word of life. Mambe sustains spiritual communication, collective thought, and the daily practice of the principles that guide life.