Sara Flores’s Amazon Journey Arrives at New York’s DOC NYC

White Cube presents the North American premiere of ‘The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs’, a documentary that traces Sara Flores’s passage from the Shipibo Conibo communities of the Peruvian Amazon into the rarefied realm of contemporary art. Directed by Èlia Gasull Balada and Matteo Norzi and produced by the Shipibo Conibo Center, the film captures an artist whose work emerges from a lineage of botanical knowledge and ceremonial practice, transformed into visual language that bridges two worlds.

Sara’s journey unfolds across the film’s careful gaze. Her practice, rooted in the visual traditions of her Shipibo Conibo heritage, carries within it patterns and colours derived from centuries of indigenous botanical understanding. The documentary moves beyond simple biography to explore how her artistic vision navigates between the specificity of her origins and the global art ecosystem, a passage few artists undertake with such authenticity and rigour.

The film already carries the weight of significant recognition. Following its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, it screened at Mostra São Paulo before arriving at DOC NYC, where it competes in the festival’s International Competition category. The screening on Wednesday, 11 November at 6.45pm at the SVA Theatre in New York will be followed by a conversation with Sara alongside the directors, offering an intimate forum to discuss the work and its philosophical underpinnings.

White Cube has long championed artists whose practices extend the boundaries of contemporary art, and this documentary sits comfortably within that curatorial vision. Sara’s work demands to be seen not as exotica or representation, but as an autonomous artistic voice shaped by rigorous craft and conceptual depth. The film makes this argument with quietness and intelligence.

Imagery courtesy of White Cube (@whitecube).