One of many foremost modern artists rising from the Amazonian basin, Flores belongs to the Shipibo, an Indigenous folks a part of the Shipibo-Konibo (often known as Shipibo-Conibo) nation, who stay alongside the Ucayali River in Peru.
Debuting the artist’s first-ever movie work alongside new textile work from her masterful follow of the traditional medium of Kené, the exhibition is Flores’s third with White Dice. It follows her European debut at White Dice Paris in December 2023, coinciding along with her becoming a member of the gallery.
Flores is understood for her intricate Kené textile work—Kené being a Shipibo time period for ‘design’, rooted within the verb kéenti, which suggests to like or take care of. Central to the inventive expression of the Shipibo-Konibo Individuals, it’s created utilizing data handed down matriarchally by generations and is a part of a deeply entwined perception system. Characterised by elaborate compositions that sprout like tendrils, recalling the power of life rising, Kené is related to plant medication, spirituality and Indigenous cosmovision.
Declared a part of the Nationwide Cultural Heritage of Peru in 2008, Kené is an emblem of inventive resistance, asserting the Shipibo-Konibo Individuals’s defiance of colonial forces which have resulted in ecological destruction and environmental air pollution.
The artist’s first movie work, Non nete (Una bandera para la Nación Shipibo) (2025)—“Non nete” which means ‘our world’ – depicts certainly one of her work hung like a flag, rippling within the wind as a gentle melody sounds, and symbolises the dream of Indigenous self-determination within the type of a Shipibo Nation. Additionally featured within the exhibition are new textile work from Flores’s “Pei Kené” collection, which incorporate botanical motifs into meticulous geometric compositions.
Combining two Shipibo phrases, the exhibition title, ‘Bakish Mai’, interprets loosely to ‘Land of Yesterday and Tomorrow’. It suggests how an ancestral previous might encourage and inform the long run. It’s also the identify of the college co-founded by Flores in Peru—the primary establishment within the nation led by a totally Indigenous board of administrators, devoted to the transmission of Indigenous data with a deal with the humanities, ethnobotany, and political schooling for environmental well being.
Coinciding with the artist’s first institutional solo present, ‘Sara Flores. Non Nete. A Dream for an Indigenous Nation’, on view on the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), Peru, till 17 August 2025, the White Dice Bermondsey exhibition is a collaboration with The Shipibo-Conibo Heart, New York. The Heart is an artwork challenge within the type of a non-profit organisation that works alongside Indigenous management within the Amazon towards Shipibo self-determination and territorial sovereignty in a sustainable future. Flores will even take part on this 12 months’s version of Bienal of the Amazônias in Belém, Brazil, opening in August.
at White Dice Bermondsey, London
till September 7, 2025
