September 21 – December 1
Quipu Girok (2021) is a large-scale textile installation. The title combines ancient Andean language and Korean, loosely translating to Knot (quipu) Record (girok). Since the 1960s and 1970s, Cecilia has been featuring the quipu in her work – an ancient Andean record-keeping device used to convey both narrative and numerical information –, involving knotted strings made from camelid fibre or cotton. This textile technology was banned during European colonization of the region.
The installation consists of columns of painted gauze (reminiscent of ancient forms of indigenous painting on weaving), silk polyester (hanbok), and cotton (used in traditional Korean textiles) that hang vertically from uneven bamboo sticks. Each panel of transparent fabric is painted using pigment and pastel crayon to create a multi-layered work. These paintings, like the installation Quipu Girok, feature marks and geometric signs and symbols that recall the very beginning of painting on textiles in the pre-Columbian Andes.
The exhibition also includes a selection of precarious sculptures. The first precarious works by Vicuña were created in Chile at the Concón beach in 1966. Like sacred offerings or a refuge from microscopic life, these small assemblages—made of driftwood, pebbles, feathers, or string—opened up an expanded dialogue with nature. At high tide, they were swept away by waves. The precarious draws attention to the power of that which is marked as disposable by the logic of consumerism. The delicacy, ethereal quality, and small size of these pieces are all integral traits of Vicuna’s work, though this ephemeral quality has all too frequently led to their being overlooked as serious sculpture. Over the years, she has referred to them variously as ‘ritual performances’, ‘spatial metaphors’, and ‘multidimensional poems’.
Bio
Cecilia Vicuña (she/her) is a poet, artist, activist and filmmaker whose work addresses pressing concerns of the modern world, including ecological destruction, human rights, and cultural homogenization. Born and raised in Santiago de Chile, she has been in exile since the early 1970s, after the military coup against the president Salvador Allende. In London, she was a co-founder of Artists for Democracy in l974. She coined the term “Arte Precario” in the mid-1960s in Chile, as a new independent and non-colonized category for her precarious works composed of debris, structures that disappear in the landscape, which include her quipus (knot in Quechua), envisioned as poems in space. Vicuña has re-invented the ancient Pre-Columbian quipu system of non-writing with knots through ritual acts that weave the urban landscape, rivers and oceans, as well as people, to re-construct a sense of unity and awareness of interconnectivity. These works bridge art and poetry as a way of “hearing an ancient silence waiting to be heard.” Her poetry and Palabrarmas (word-weapons) stem from a deep enquiry into the roots of language. Her early work as a poet in the 60’s was simultaneously celebrated by avant-garde poetry magazines such as El Corno Emplumado, Mexico City (l961–1968), and censored and/or suppressed for many decades in Chile and Latin America.
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, NY (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, CA (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.
The author of more than 30 volumes of art and poetry published in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, her most recent books are: Deer Book, Radius, Santa Fe, 2024, PALABRARmas, USACH, Editorial de la Universidad de Santiago (2023); Word Weapons, Co-published by RITE Editions and Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2023); Libro Venado, Direcciones, Buenos Aires (2022); Sudor de Futuro, Altazor, Chile (2021); Cruz del Sur, Lumen Chile (2020), Minga del Cielo Oscuro, CCE, Chile (2020), and New & Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña, edited and translated by Rosa Alcalá, Kelsey Street Press (2018), among many others.
Cecilia Vicuña was the winner of the 2023 Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas 2023, one of the most prestigious awards given by her homeland. Preceding this recognition, Vicuña was elected a foreign honorary member of the United States Academy of Arts and Letters and also received the Gold Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2022 at the 59th Venice Biennale.
Location
- Accessibility
32 Lisgar St and Park
Accessible entrance
– Note: If you have access needs and are being dropped off at the venue, use ’36 Lisgar’ as the drop-off address instead of 32 Lisgar. This will bring you closer to our entrance.Washrooms
Elevator
AODA compliant building
Parking: Limited Street, Underground Parking (Paid)
There is ample paid parking nearby, including a Green P lot in the building, a lot accessible from the alley between Dovercourt and Lisgar off Sudbury, and street parking on both Lisgar Street and Abell Street.
- Getting There
32 Lisgar St and Park
By subway: Line 1 – From St. Andrew Station, take the 504 King streetcar west to Abell Street, walk 2 minutes. Line 2 – From Dufferin Station: take the 29 Bus south to Queen Street West, walk 7 minutes
By streetcar: Take the 501 Queen streetcar and get off at Abell Street, just east of Gladstone. Or, take the 504 King streetcar. Get off at Sudbury Street, and walk north/west along Sudbury to Lisgar Street.