Cecilia Vicuña
(Santiago, Chile, 1948) Poet and artist based in New York and Santiago, Chile. Her work is noted for themes of language, memory, dissolution, extinction, and exile. Vicuña began creating “precarious works” and quipus in the mid-1960s as a way of “hearing an ancient silence waiting to be heard.” Her multi-dimensional works begin as a poem, an image that morphs into a film, a song, a sculpture, or a collective performance. These ephemeral, site-specific installations in nature, streets, and museums combine ritual and assemblage. Vicuña has authored over 30 books of poetry and art. She is the co-founder of oysi.org, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to indigenous oral tradition. Retrospective and solo exhibitions of Vicuña’s work have been organized at a number of major institutions, including, most recently, the Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile, Chile (2023); Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom (2022); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (2022); Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia (MAMU), Bogotá, Colombia (2022); Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), Madrid, Spain (2021); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, USA (2020); and Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Mexico (2020). Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including in documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017), and the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), and is part of major museum collections around the world.
