Venuca Evanán (Peru, 1987) is an artist, activist, and educator. She inherits the artistic expressions of the Sarhua community in the Ayacucho region in southern Peru. Her primary medium is painting with natural earth colors and bird feathers, following the traditional techniques and materials used in elaborating the Sarhua Boards. As the daughter of pioneering promoters of this art, such as Primitivo Evanán and Valeriana Vivanco, her education as an artist has been transmitted through previous generations.

However, Venuca’s work takes an extraordinary stance as it seeks to maintain traditions while transgressing the cultural structures that have bound women in her community. Through her work, the artist brings narratives distinct from those typically depicted in the boards, such as festivals and customs, expanding her narrative to themes like erotic relationships, social and political marches, and the conditions of indigenous migrants. The humor and sexual content in her practice adds another semantic level, as it confronts the viewer with issues taken for granted in the historical rhetoric about indigenous peoples, where subjects have been attributed childlike characteristics, associated with innocence, thus facilitating processes of invisibilization.