Born in 1948 in Santiago, Chile, Vicuña is each a poet and a visible artist and intertwines these two artforms to provide work throughout a spread of media. Amongst a lot else, she has a singular narrative portray fashion, makes enormous suspended installations utilizing discovered supplies and textiles, phases performances and makes ephemeral sculptures.
Cecilia Vicuña’s Violeta Parra (1973)
© Cecilia Vicuna; Picture Tate
From the beginning, she has been deeply embedded in politics and social considerations, together with human rights abuses in Chile, conflicts in several elements of the world, Indigenous tradition and colonialism, and the local weather disaster.
Cecilia Vicuña’s Llaverito (Blue Girl) / Ladilla, Crab (2019, after the misplaced unique 1979 work)
© 2025 Cecilia Vicuña; Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul and London; Picture Mathew Herrman
Her work is underpinned by a profound engagement with completely different types of Indigenous language allied to a response to distinguished developments in Trendy and up to date artwork, from Surrealism to Postminimalism and Conceptualism.
Cecilia Vicuña’s Ser eléctrico (precarios) (2018)
© 2026 Cecilia Vicuña/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London; Picture Studio Kukla
She discusses the symbiosis of phrase and picture in her work, the wordplay that underpins a few of her key ideas and strands of labor, and the way art-making is a full-body expertise.
Cecilia Vicuña’s Nasca Paracas (2025)
© 2026 Cecilia Vicuña/Artist Rights Society(ARS), New York; Courtesy the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; Picture Thomas Merle
She displays on her early fascination with pre-Renaissance portray, the affect of her aunt, the artist Rosa Vicuña, on her expertise of pre-Columbian artwork and languages, her admiration of Doris Salcedo, and the visceral shock of seeing medieval sheela na gig sculptures in Eire. Plus, she provides perception into studio life and each day rituals and solutions our final query: what’s artwork for?
Cecilia Vicuña: Residing Threads, Whitechapel Gallery, 7 October-14 February 2027Cecilia Vicuña: Quipu of Encounters: The Dream of Water, Museum of Up to date Artwork, Los Angeles, 15 November–6 June 2027
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the humanities and tradition platform. Bloomberg Connects affords entry to an enormous vary of worldwide cultural organisations via a single click on, with new guides being added frequently. They embrace a number of UK museums and galleries which have held solo exhibitions of Cecilia Vicuña’s work, together with the Whitechapel Gallery, the place she has a significant exhibition within the autumn of 2026, and Tate in London, the Guggenheim in New York and the Wattis in San Francisco. The information to The Wattis contains audio and textual content exploring the exhibition Caguiat Delacruz: The Tramp, which contains a newly commissioned movie, set up, portray and prints by the collaborative duo Justin Caguiat and Rafael Delacruz. The brand new movie responds to the good Charlie Chaplin film, additionally referred to as The Tramp. You’ll be able to hear Daisy Nam, the director of the Wattis Institute, elaborate on the themes of the exhibition, and Courtney Sennish, a print-master, focus on how she collaborated with Caguiat Delacruz and a staff of scholar artists to provide the print element of the exhibition.
