"Riverlines: Three Generations of Amazonian Indigenous Artists" guides spectators through separate exhibitions in a manner akin to sailing down a riverline.
The Amazon River, one of the largest waterways in the world, winds through a rainforest that is home to an extraordinary diversity of life. “Riverlines,” curated by Simon Watson at David Nolan Gallery, brings together the work of three generations of Amazonian Indigenous artists: Chico da Silva, Joseca Yanomami and Kuenan Mayu. The exhibition gives each artist a separate room with its own distinct wall color, making note that each artist comes from a different generation.
Chico da Silva’s paintings are the exhibition’s most visually dense and intricate. His compositions are filled with fantastical birds, fish and hybrid creatures that confront one another. They have large eyes, open jaws and razor-like teeth. The electric golden hue that covers the paintings heightens the dreamlike quality of these scenes, evoking richly illustrated folktales. Interestingly, da Silva’s paintings contain no human figures. While in the room next door, Joseca Yanomami’s watercolors depict both humans and animals.
Kuenan Mayu paints on tururi bark, a rich material for storytelling, especially since his work feels the most surreal. Snakes emerge with human heads, fish become people, and mermaid-like figures hover. Where da Silva paints a world without humans, Mayu imagines one in which the distinction between human and spirit is indistinguishable. The bark also feels like a messenger, like the handwritten notes from the past to the future, even though these bark paintings are among the newest in the show, most made in 2026.
While each room feels like its own separate exhibition, I started to feel the connection between each generation of painters and the importance of thinking about all these differing styles of making art from the same originating landscape. The three Amazonian artists depict scenes that are full of life, both animal and human. They showcase a lineage present as a “riverline,” the lines we can trace from a river to its source and from an artist’s work to its predecessor.
Rather than speaking about the Amazon from the outside, “Riverlines” is a way (or rather three ways) to see from within it, from the viewpoint of artists. The preservation of the ecosystem is inseparable from the preservation of these stories. One of the most intriguing works to me was Joseca Yanomami’s “Transformation of the Krokori pë into frogs (Bufo Margaritifera),” 2026. A group of men and women circle around, intercepted by toads between them, in a formation similar to “The Dance,” 1970 by Henri Matisse. There is a note that accompanies the work, presumably from Yanomami himself: “Long ago, these ancestors turned into toads. They lived in a large house and began to sing at 7pm, never stopping their song and continuing to sing until morning, for they would transform. But these Krõkõ kept singing a single, very ugly song until dawn. Therefore, at 7am, the Yõrixiamari bird sang a truly beautiful song. Then everyone made a commotion, shouted loudly, and cursed the Krõkõri, scaring them away, and so they ran away, jumped into the water, and transformed into toads. That is how it happened to the ancestors long ago.”
The exhibition altogether is not unlike a storybook. If you find yourself in the beautiful building in Manhattan, up an elevator and the curving stairs of the historical mansion that the gallery is housed in, you might just feel under the spell of these magical mystical creatures and find yourself wanting to float around like a fish in Chico da Silva’s electric paintings, or, like a mermaid in Kuenan Mayu’s work.
