Cecilia Vicuña visited Northwestern on April 21st and 22nd, 2014, for a performance and a workshop. A full video of Vicuña’s performance, and the ensuing discussion, is available here. Photo highlights from her performance are collected in a slideshow below. Enjoy!
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), andSABORAMI, (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), andPrecario/Precarious, Tanam Press, New York 1983. With Ernesto Livron-Grosman, she edited the Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry (2009)