Cecilia Vicuña: Poetry Saved Me After Pinochet's Coup — SkimNews
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- Cecilia Vicuña was granted asylum in Britain in 1973 after presenting her recently published poetry book Saborami to Home Office judges, who ruled she would be killed if returned to Chile following the Pinochet coup; she has lived in New York since 1980.
- Living Threads, her first major UK exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, brings together six decades of work across painting, textile, photography, installation and film, and is set in Stepney Green where she lived as a young artist in the 1970s.
- Artists for Democracy was co-founded by Vicuña in 1974 with Guy Brett, David Medalla and John Dugger, in solidarity with Chile and other liberation struggles; a room in the exhibition is dedicated to the group with never-before-seen documents and photographs.
- Vicuña lost a trunk containing 400 sculptures left with friends in London, Chile and Bogotá during her exile — the works were eventually thrown away — and has since recreated some from memory, calling the process 'reincarnation' rather than reconstruction.
- Brain Forest Quipu, Vicuña's 2022 Tate Modern Turbine Hall commission made from fraying wool, knotted rope and Thames mudlarking debris, earned a Guardian five-star review calling it the most moving Turbine Hall commission in years; she also won the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale.
- Vicuña frames today's political and technological landscape — Britain's recognition of Pinochet as 'celebrating' a violent overthrow, the rightward shift in Chile, and AI controlled by private companies — as repeating a pattern in which 'a destructive force comes in to stop' democratic openings.
Why it matters: The exhibition marks a homecoming for a 78-year-old artist who won asylum in Britain, the first country to recognize Pinochet, by presenting her own poetry to Home Office judges as evidence of persecution. The show reunites six decades of fragile, ecological and political work, including pieces recreated after a trunk of 400 sculptures was thrown away during her exile — a rare case where a country's recognition of a regime and its protection of a single dissident coincided.
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