Andean artist Antonio Paucar wins Artes Mundi prize in Wales

Antonio Paucar’s large-scale, hand-woven alpaca wool sculpture, La Energía Espiral del Ayni, represents ‘the idea that everything is linked’, he said. Photograph: Dimitris Legakis/The Guardian

An artist and beekeeper from a remote corner of the Andes has won one of the UK’s most prestigious contemporary arts awards and plans to spend the £40,000 prize on building a cultural centre in the Peruvian mountains.

Antonio Paucar was declared the winner of the biennial Artes Mundi prize after presenting work ranging from a spiral made of alpaca wool to a video of him writing a poem – in his own blood – about the environmental crisis facing his region as he sits at a table high in the mountains.