CECILIA VICUÑA. VEROIR EL FRACASO ILUMINADO
On February 20th, the Dos de Mayo Art Cantre (CA2M), in collaboration with the Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam, opened the solo exhibition Cecilia Vicuña. Veroir el fracaso iluminado (Cecilia Vicuña. Veroir the illuminated failure). Conceived as a retrospective exhibition of the Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña (Santiago de Chile, 1948), the project is curated by Miguel A. López (Lima, 1983) and has been supported by the Chilean Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage. This is the first exhibition of this size to showcase the artist —winner of the Velázquez Prize for Visual Arts 2019 for a career that, according to the jury, has succeeded in displaying "a multidimensional art that interacts with the land, written language and textiles"— in Spain.
Cecilia Vicuña is one of the central figures of the Latin American region on an international level. With an immense trajectory and multiple mentions, the appearance of her artwork on the international scene assumed great popularity for her performances. However, throughout her career the artist has demonstrated her interdisciplinary capacity, establishing herself as a fundamental artist in conceptual art and in the political scene —where she has taken sides through her writing. Currently, her work consists of paintings, sculptures, audio-visual projects and large-scale installations.
Cecilia Vicuña. Veroir el fracaso iluminado proposes an in-depth understanding of Vicuña's multidisciplinary character and the composition of her artistic language, which oscillates between multiple media and techniques. To this end, the CA2M has managed to bring together more than a hundred oeuvres by the artist that correspond to different stages of her training and maturity. According to the cultural centre, a selection that explores eroticism, colonial legacies, liberation struggles, collective happiness, the thoughts of native peoples and the climate crisis. In relation to these axes, and Vicuña's work in general, López said: "Her desire to dignify the debris, the small particles and things that had been discarded raises the question of how to reconnect the scattered parts of what we might today call ecological justice —an assembly of many worlds and multiple forms of consciousness.”
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"Ángel de la menstruación", 1973. Óleo sobre tela, 57,1 x 48,2 cm. Ph: England & Co Gallery, Londres. Colección Catherine Petitgas.
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"Palabrarmas". Vista de la instalación en CA2M, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Móstoles.
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"Ver dad", 1974. Collage sobre papel. Ph: England & Co Gallery,
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"La ruca abstracta", 1974. Instalación. Bambú, lana, hilo, objetos precarios, y siete pinturas al óleo. Vista de la instalación en CA2M, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Móstoles.
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"Quipu menstrual (la sangre de los glaciares)", 2006. Instalación para CA2M. Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo.
Cecilia Vicuña's artwork is marked, to a large extent, by the political events that traversed her life. After the 1973 coup d'état, which would usher in the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet until 1990, a young Vicuña in the midst of her artistic and intellectual training began to link her artistic production to political resistance movements and, above all, to dialogue with Andean indigenous culture. An illustrative example of the early appearance of these two backbones of her work —the political matter and the indigenous matter— is prior to the coup d'état: in 1967, at the age of 19, the artist presented her No—manifiesto (Non-manifesto). As a result, the collective Tribu No emerged, a group of artists who, through rituals and playful performances, denounced the conservative cells that were springing up in Chile.
In short, the retrospective exhibition on show at the CA2M until July 11th brings to the European public the original and powerful perspective of an artist of international relevance. An artist who has been able to extend from words a career that brings all disciplines into dialogue in pursuit of a universal language.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Exhibition: Cecilia Vicuña. Veroir el fracaso iluminado
Curator: Miguel A. López
When: 20/ 02/ 2021 - 11/ 07/ 2021
Where: Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), in collaboration with Kunstinstituut Melly (Holland).
