Gabriella Tello

A group of friends walk across the sandy outskirts of Lima in order to pay their respects to a fallen gang member.

Through illustration, the artist has documented animals, plants, objects, and designs of endangered Indigenous populations in the Peruvian Amazon. One of her first experiences in this artistic endeavor for research was with the Iskonawa, or 'children of the paucar' (a Panoan people from the Ucayali region). Using various manual and digital techniques, along with her field photography, she created a hundred images to illustrate a vocabulary and educational materials, as part of a project to document and revitalize the Iskonawa language and culture, a project conceived more than ten years ago. Today, far removed from academia, she returns to these images with many questions about her place in the Amazon as a linguist, researcher, and mestiza.