“The River Within” serves as an interpretation of the Ucayali river, an Amazonian river in Peru. By using a fabric derived from Shipibo Conibo culture and painting it on the artist’s skin, Paredes demonstrates how the river and its culture are inherent in the lives of the locals. It is, at the same time, a tribute to women because of their standing on the community and a vindication of the original cultures of Peru. In words from curator Alasdair Foster: "The ‘landscapes’ of artist Cecilia Paredes draw on and articulate an interior experience. Her work with fabric designs began when she moved from Costa Rica to the USA. The predicament of the migrant is to become subsumed into the patterns of another culture, another way of life. To survive one must blend in; learn to be something else, someone new. But are we lost to ourselves as we dissolve into the alien landscapes of the new? These are questions raised by her images. The disappearing act is in the eye of the beholder. The woman remains whole and uncorrupted, we just have to work harder to perceive how she inhabits harmonizes with (while remaining distinct from) the florid patterns and stylized foliage. Form holds the truth; pattern the context. And it is our evolved sense of self-preservation, repurposed to consider the internal life of others, through which we have the possibility of true insight."