Amazonian Waterway, Amazonian Water-Worlds Rivers in Government Projects and Indigenous Art

This chapter analyses diverse river realities and current water conflicts in Peru’s Amazon. It shows how the Peruvian government’s Amazonian Waterway, or Hydrovia Project, and the indigenous Amazonian water-worlds are immersed in different notions, forms of relations, management and river-making, as well as in power relations that determine reality, cultural specificity and inequalities. The chapter argues, however, that contemporary indigenous art becomes today a key practice that visibilises and pushes forward indigenous Amazonian worlds. By focusing on the ways in which the work of Harry Pinedo, Roldán Pinedo and Rember Yahuarcani explore and inform about the river, it explains densities, spatialities and times of water other than those foster by the government’s project of “public interest,” and discusses notions of solidity and liquidity. The chapter argues that these art practices stand for multiple conceptions-being of the world/s and for the need of their equal respect and participation in shaping and managing the world.