Sculpture - Cecilia Vicuña

Vicuña is a chilean poet and artist based in new york and Santiago. Her work is noted for the themes of language, memory, dissolution, extinction and exile which hold sentimental value to her.

She is also an activist on some day to day life. Work address is pressing concerns of the modern world including ecological destruction, human rights, and cultural homogenisation how multidimensional works begin as a poem, an image that morphs into a film, a song, a sculpture, or a collective performance for example her paintings of the early 1970s decolonise the art of the conquerors the Saints inherited from the Catholic Church to create irreverent images of the heroes of the revolution

The particular image that vicuña has transformed the turbine hall at Tate modern into rainforest Quipu it is a multimedia installation made up of sculpture, sound, music, and video, which mourns the destruction of nature and the loss of indigenous history and culture. In the Turbine hall of Tate modern the artwork of vicuña that reflects and Andean traditions were looking to the challenges of the future and it’s all plucked up from the Thames

I quite liked this sculpture and installation because of the found materials from nature shows the experimentation of materials used and shows very sentimental symbolism to show that the work is coming towards you and wash over you however there is a certain hypnotic attractive quality to the work but it’s deeper meanings are really difficult to descry without a bit of feeling something.

The drawn out materials which was composed from the Thames by women from local Latin American communities they found objects such as tangled wool plant fibres rope and cardboard are all bound together to form an installation that is part of London part Andean speaks to issues from all over the Earth.

The word ‘Quipu’ interested me the most because this means it’s the sounds that were played around this artwork and basically a recording of indigenous sound and rhythms which adds all interest as we walk around in between the strands. Without the soundtrack the dangling objects are curiosity the South American visit the rhythms and natural sound help establish the context from which the work draws inspiration it reinforces a sense of loss and disappearance traditions and stolen lands

Part 1

Part 1

Starting Art project

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