Precarious: A Poetry Performance by Cecilia Vicuña
Please join us for a reading and a workshop with acclaimed poet, artist, and activist, Cecilia Vicuña. Vicuña will read from her extensive and rich body of work in Harris Hall 108 , Monday, April 21 5pm.
On Tuesday, April 22nd at 12:30pm in the Hagstrum Room (University Hall 201), she will lead an informal seminar on the role of poetry in the transformation of the world. She will discuss her experience in linguistic creativity in urban settings and in contemporary rituals of oral poetry involving thousands of people in non urban settings.
Chilean poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña performs and exhibits her work widely in Europe, Latin America and the US. She is also a political activist and founding member of Artists for Democracy. She has been creating “precarious works”, ephemeral installations in nature, cities and museums since 1966, as a way of “hearing an ancient silence waiting to be heard.”
She has taught in indigenous communities, and at universities such as Naropa University, Denver University, SUNY Purchase and Universidad de Buenos Aires. Her visual work has been exihibited at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Santiago, The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), The Whitecahel Art Gallery in London, the Whitney, and MoMA, among many others.
She is the author of 16 books translated into several languages, including Palabrarmas (2005), I Tu, (2004), Instan, (2003), El Templo (2001), UL, Four Mapuche Poets, edited by Cecilia Vicuña (1998), Samara, Ed. Museo Rayo (1987). La Wik’uña (1990), Palabrarmas (1984), Luxumei o el Traspié de la Doctrina, (1983), and SABORAMI, (1973). Works translated into English include Templo e’Saliva / Spit Temple, a collection of her oral performances, (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), Cloud‐Net (1999), QUIPOem, The Precarious, The Art & Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña (1997), Unravelling Words & The Weaving of Water, edited by Eliot Weinberger (1992), and Precario/Precarious, Tanam Press, New York 1983. With Ernesto Livron-Grosman, she edited the Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry (2009).