Hallucinogenic Vicuña

Procreate, 2020

“Hallucinogenic Vicuña” features a San Pedro cactus sliced open, exposing 14 lagoons naturally arranged in a shape resembling the head of a Vicuña, an animal worshipped by the Inca people of ancient Peru. The lagoons are surrounded by Peruvian Cantua Buxifolia flowers and sacred stones often used in mesada healing ceremonies. The juice of the hallucinogenic cactus, that induces visions, drips down the cactus and is used in these ceremonies performed by Shamans. 

In Peru, the Huaringas (a complex of 14 sacred lagoons in the mountainous Peruvian province of Huancabamba) is renowned for its ancient tradition of mystical healings. The natural landscape plays an essential part in the healing rituals that the healers and shamans perform. The healers offer medicinal herbs and mesada (healing ceremony) for incurable conditions and to ward off evil. The ceremony connects patients to spirits and nature, it includes scattered flowers, crosses, skulls and sacred stones to absorb negative energy and the drinking of juice from the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus to induce visions. Vicuñas are revered today for producing a fleece so fine that it was considered to be a cloth of gold that only Inca (a pastoral tribe) royalty were permitted to wear.

The national animal of Peru: Vicuña
The national flower of Peru: Cantua Buxifolia