KYIV – VENICE: Celia Vazquez Yui in dialogue with Maria Prymachenko

Magic Beasts

https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2026/celia-v%C3%A1squez-yui

Art work by Celia Vasquez Yui / Courtesy the artist / Salon 94

In the practice of Celia Vázquez Yui, presented at this year’s Biennale, zoomorphic ceramics emerge not as illustrations of folklore but as functional objects of cosmology. Each figure – a jaguar, a snake, a crocodile – bears kené, the geometric code of the Shipibo people which, according to tradition, has the power to physically transform those who behold it. Maria Prymachenko, in turn, developed her own bestiary, in which the beast was never merely a decorative motif. She deliberately endowed her creatures with both benevolence and menace, regarding fear as a means of preventing catastrophe rather than an emotion to be avoided.

Both artists inherited their methods through generations of practice rather than through academic training. Both employ the animal form as a vehicle for artistic and existential expression: Vázquez Yui articulates the territorial sovereignty of the Shipibo through ceramics, while Prymachenko responded to experiences of upheaval not through testimony but through the image of the beast on paper. In both practices, the magical animal functions not as a representation but as a medium of memory and a bearer of a particular understanding of the world.