Cecilia Vicuña
Dreaming about water — A retrospective of the future
18 May—15 September 2024
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Cecilia Vicuña (Santiago, Chile, 1948) Dreaming about water — A retrospective of the future is a collaboration between the Pinacoteca and the National Museum of Chile, in Santiago, and with Malba, in Buenos Aires. The curatorship is by Peruvian Miguel López and will bring the artist's paintings, photographs, videos, sound pieces, sculptures and installations to Pina Contemporânea. One of her most emblematic works, menstrual (2006), will be seen by the public for the first time in Brazil.
This is the Chilean artist's first major exhibition in Brazil, bringing together around 200 works spanning 60 years of her production and presenting Vicuña's commitment to popular struggles, respect for human rights and environmental protection. The name of the exhibition represents an invitation to change our relationship with the earth.
The exhibition is organised into nine sections. The first is Tribu No, name of a group of young artists and poets from Santiago who, like her, sought to express their opposition to the conservative forces in Chile. The second core “Paintings, poems and explanations” presents some of his first paintings produced in Santiago, London and Bogotá, along with explanatory texts.
A series of documents, photographs and printed materials related to solidarity campaigns with Chile make up the core “Artists for democracy“, while the core Vicuña in Colombia represents the moment in which Vicuña went through a period of creative explosion in which she brought to life hundreds of drawings, collages and paintings, actions in public spaces, educational workshops, scenographic projects and experimental 16 mm films.
The fifth section of the exhibition is called Words and represents the period (1973) in which the artist began to produce a series of drawings, collages and videos that reflected on the role of poetry in a time of political repression and forced disappearances in South America.
The missing quipu alludes to the legacy of politically motivated kidnappings and murders perpetrated by several 7th century Latin American dictatorships. Core XNUMX, Precarious brings Vicuña’s first precarious works created on Concón Beach, in Chile, in 1966. The installation Menstrual quipu (The blood of the glaciers) names the eighth and final nucleus of the exhibition. At Pina, visitors will be able to see a version made for the Grand Gallery space.
