Cecilia Vicuña

The first overview of the work of this seminal multi-disciplinary artist, Spit Temple collects texts and transcriptions of Cecilia Vicuna's uncategorizable improvised performances, which combine singing, movement, chants, and stories. Also included are a critical introduction by Rosa Alcala, a poetic memoir by Vicuna addressing her life in performance, images from Vicuna's extensive personal archive, and response pieces by Maria Damon, Linda Duke, Nada Gordon, Jena Osman, Kenneth Sherwood, Juliana Spahr, Dennis Tedlock, Edwin Torres, and Rodrigo Toscano. "Vicuna's work, at its very essence, is 'a way of remembering'--as if exile and recall joined to unravel an 'autobiography in debris;' as one personal story within a larger narrative." --Roberto Tejada

The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña

Spit Temple

Dieter Roelstraete

José de Nordenflycht Concha

From the 1970s to the present, Chilean artist, poet and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuas (b. 1948) work has used red thread to visually and poetically engage with rituals from Aboriginal Australia, South Africa, Paleolithic Europe and pre-Columbian America. Vicuas performances, site-specific installations, paintings and drawings relate to the symbolic function of textile and language in terms of femininity, maternity and the support and continuation of life. Published on the occasion of Vicuas installation in Athens for dOCUMENTA (14), Read Thread tells the story of the sanguine thread in Vicuas worka kind of weaving-as-writingand conveys the tension of ecological disaster and reparation as well as a bodily sense of the cosmic scale of landscape, history and time. Alongside historical and recent documentation of Vicuas large-scale installations, the softcover publication extensively illustrates her drawings, poetic texts and narratives relating the works to their political and historical context. Essays by dOCUMENTA (14) curator Dieter Roelstraete and art historian Jos de Nordenflycht Concha complete the book.

The Story of the Red Thread

Read Thread

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Art. First published in 1973, two months after the military coup in Chile, Cecilia Vicuña's SABORAMI is a document of the times and the way in which history can change art. It is filled with the urgent hope that art, too, can change history. Put together when Vicuña was just twenty-five years old, the poems, paintings, and objects of SABORAMI enact a complex and multidimensional conversation. The meanings of the works (which were created over a seven year period) shifted radically after the events of September 11, 1973. Their meanings continue to shift and resonate in light of political events today. This recreation of the original SABORAMI is published with a new afterword Vicuña wrote especially for this edition.

Saborami

Alberto Madrid Letelier

otoño

Poetry. Art. Includes drawings by the writer. Cecilia Vicuna's INSTAN is composed in handwrittenlines that move across the page with the instantaneousfeeling of marks in a private journal, the booktransmits the energy of her performative works, wherethread and poetic lines play at being one. The word/drawings are certain and fragile. In theirpower to preserve and transform, they offer hope inart and daily speech for radical change. "Cecilia Vicuna, born and raised in Santiago de Chile, has been an exile since the early 1970s. Vicuna has never accepted the boundaries between cultural disciplines, creating a terrain of her own ..." Lucy Lippard, "The Precarious" The Art and Poetry of Cecilia Vicuna."

Instan

Beforehand

A dual volume displays the work of the environmental artist, left-wing activist, and poet, who combines Andean vernacular with other languages to weave playful verse, along with a book of critical essays about her work. UP.

The Art and Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña

The Precarious

Jena Osman

Janet Zweig

juliana Spahr

"While not the death knell for CHAIN, this is the last annual issue of CHAIN for some time...We've decided that it's time to continue the CHAIN project in another form-not only to further the possibilities of our original intent, but also to save us from the crash and burn associated with putting out a journal that regularly has over seventy contributors"-from the Editors' Notes. Learn about CHAIN's new format (and call for guest editors!) in this final annual issue, and dive into new work from Michael C. Boyko, Joshua Clover & Chris Nealon, Sharon Dolin, Craig Dworkin, Rob Halpern, Brenda Hillman, Stephen Ratcliffe, Jennifer Scappettone, Padcha Tuntha-Obas, Anne Waldman and more.

Facts

Chain

Precario/precarious

Cecilia Vicuna

Ul: Four Mapuche Poets is a collection of work by contemporary Chilean poets Elicura Chihuailaf, Leonel Lienlaf, Jaime Luis Huenun, and Graciela Huinao. Written in the poets native Mapudungun and Spanish, and appearing with English translations, these extraordinary poems celebrate the rich indigenous heritage of Chile and provide rare insight into a culture that remains largely unknown.

Cecilia Vicuña

About

Books

Join the club