1971, in Pori Pori, Yanomami community in El Alto Orinoco, Venezuela

Since the 90s, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe has been developing a practice aimed at rescuing the oral memory of his people, their cosmogony and ancestral traditions including the craft of papermaking, the edition of books prepared with his community, and more recently drawing as a tool to represent them. His experience in the field of creation began in 1992 when he learnt to make handmade paper with native fibres such as Shiki or Abaca, under the tutelage of Mexican artist Laura Anderson Barbata. Together they would found the Yanomami Owëmamotima community project (The Yanomami art of play paper), a pioneering and self-sustaining initiative from which the first handmade books have been published to date – written and illustrated – from a collective community experience.   Hakihiiwë has participated in multiple collective shows, and his work has been individually exhibited twice in Office #1/Caracas (2013/Porerimou and 2010/Oni The pe Komi), as well as at the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving La Esmeralda in Mexico City and in the Center for Books and Paper of Columbia College in Chicago/USA.