• Gaudencia is one of the first women promoting craft from Sarhua internationally
• Her narrative embroidery works are personal testimonies of survival and heritage
• Sarhua boards were declared Cultural National Heritage of Peru in 2018

In the small town of Sarhua, over the southern Peruvian Andes, storytelling is a unique art. Since the 19th century, pictorial narrations of this town’s family customs, culture and struggles have been recorded on wooden panels, known as Sarhua boards, and displayed in each home. Gaudencia Yupari Quispe, was introduced to this craft by her late husband, an artist and community leader. "I felt a duty to perpetuate my husband’s legacy in Lima, where we had migrated in the early 1980s," she explains. Inspired by the Sarhua boards, Gaudencia found a way to express her sensitivity and creative spirit through textile work, and created her own storytelling techniques with sewing. In her works, she recounts her own life experiences and the values she defends, through embroidery, patchwork and original textile appliqués.