b. 1992, Santa Clara de Yarinacocha, Ucayali, Perú

Chonon Bensho is a visual artist whose practice engages with the transmission of cultural knowledge and ancestral memory, and the embodied practices rooted in Indigenous tradition. Born in the Peruvian Amazon and belonging to the Shipibo-Konibo people, she is a descendant of Onanya—healers and bearers of ancestral wisdom —and women who have preserved and passed down practices of embroidery, painting, and medicinal knowledge. Bensho draws deeply from this heritage, fusing traditional techniques such as embroidery and natural pigment painting with contemporary media including installation and video.

Her work reflects a dynamic dialogue between ancestral knowledge and the present, addressing the complexities of cultural survival, environmental change, and the spiritual interconnection between humans and the ecosystems they inhabit. Through patterns, symbols, and storytelling, Bensho explores how Indigenous epistemologies can offer alternative ways of understanding the world. Her visual language is rooted in kené, the geometric design tradition of her people, which she reinterprets in both intimate and large-scale formats.

Bensho is the first Indigenous woman from Ucayali to win the National Painting Contest of the Central Reserve Bank of Peru (2022). She has exhibited her work at the Alliance Française, the Museo Central del BCRP, and the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega Cultural Center in Lima, as well as at the Culturescapes Festival in Basel and W-Galería in Buenos Aires. Her works are part of the collections of several museums, including the Lima Art Museum and the Museum of the Central Reserve Bank of Peru. In addition to her artistic practice, she collaborates with her husband, Pedro Favaron, on ethnographic research and together they founded Nishi Nete, a clinic for traditional medicine and a center for ancestral studies.