Cecilia Vicuña

Cecilia Vicuña: the artist

Cecilia Vicuña (Santiago, Chile, 1948; lives and works in New York) is an artist, poet, and activist whose multidisciplinary practice—spanning sculpture, installation, poetry, painting, video, and performance—stands among the most radical voice in contemporary art.

Deeply committed to political and social engagement, particularly concerning Indigenous memory, her writings and works reject notion of provocatory progress, advocating instead for a reawakening of ancestral knowledge. Drawing from traditions that center culture and society, the artist’s research is rooted in collectivism and the importance of community. Combining spirituality and pragmatism, her practice has always raised reflections on themes such as ecology, exile, and social justice.

Singularly using natural and organic materials— as wool, shells, feathers, and found wood—Vicuña creates sculptures and installations that evoke life’s fragility, the transience of contemporary society, and the vulnerability of our natural resources. In her hands, the ephemeral, precarious, and fragile become tools of resistance against the violence of modernity, offering alternative forms of narrative.

Vicuña’s pieces coexist in surprising formal harmony, while playing with scales ranging from the smallest to the largest. Her monumental textile installations draw inspiration from—and are named after —the quipu, the Andean knot-based system historically used to record and transmit knowledge.

The exhibition by Cecilia Vicuña at Pirelli HangarBicocca

The retrospective at Pirelli HangarBicocca will feature a wide selection of the artist’s works—including installations, sculptures, video, and audio—that will converge in an intimate encounter with her poetic vision. This layered and sensitive exploration—merging perception and memory, spirituality and activism—will address issues tied to sociopolitical, cultural, and ecological urgencies. The Navate space will be transformed into a living archive, hosting fragments and traces of ancestral knowledge and beliefs.