Miguel Vilca Vargas

“Penetrating this green in sepia and black demands a pretext, a story, or the gaze of a witness to countless events.

I want to portray us in denial and at the same time capture moments of delicious and terrifying silence.”

Búho: Where the Unseen Becomes Visible

Pucallpa was once a small trading post hidden deep in the rainforest on the banks of the Ucayali, a tributary of the Amazon. At its upper reaches lies the landing for old boats and canoes that sail further upstream to mythical places far from civilization.

This environment is characterized by vibrant colors, dark corners, frightening sounds, the song of hidden birds, screaming monkeys, and swarms of buzzing insects. An atmosphere reigns that only the rainforest knows—dark, humid, and permeated by an uncanny, living silence.

It is a place where one can immerse oneself in the past and connect in deep silence with the ancestors. In this space, people can communicate, thanks to traditions and experiences passed down through generations, with other worlds that are usually inaccessible to us.

Today, Pucallpa has become a bustling city where majestic tranquility is displaced by the noise of countless motorcycles, and the red dust they stir up blows incessantly through the lively streets.

Here lives Miguel Vilca Vargas, locally known as Búho (“Owl”), and here his works are created: mysterious, figurative images that make the invisible visible.

Vilca draws from a world where the mystical and the human are inseparably linked. His works confront us with the human condition, with our fears, longings, and hidden impulses.

At the same time, he refers to classical European art: archetypes, religious motifs, and references to the Renaissance enter into dialogue with the spiritual beings and myths of the Amazon—a dense web of memories, dreams, and inner visions emerges.

In his works, the boundaries between past, present, and future blur. They tell of ancient experiences that live on in our subconscious and of the forces of the rainforest that resonate in the human soul.

Miguel does not paint what the eyes see; he paints what the soul feels—the mysterious connection between human, nature, and the unspeakable. His figures are both intimate and archetypal, reflecting the dark and light sides of our existence. He never loses balance: the works remain reverent toward the forces that inspire them and avoid superficial effects.

The jungle surrounding him becomes a metaphor for the inner self, the shadow a presence of the hidden.

In a time when the rainforest is under grave threat and yields daily to destruction, Vilca preserves not only images but entire worlds—those invisible dimensions that are extinguished forever when the forest dies. His art reminds us that we are losing not only nature but also access to knowledge older than our civilization.

Vilca shows us the world not as it is, but as it lives within us—a place full of mysteries and existential truths.