The character arc of Cecilia Vicuña
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born on 22 July 1948 in Santiago and raised in La Florida, in the Maipo valley. Between then and now sit English learned from 1957 and large abstract paintings made in a studio her father built in the garden, an architecture course begun in 1966 and switched to fine art, a first poem published at eighteen, a master's in 1971, a British Council award and a move to London in 1972, an exile from 1973, research into indigenous art in Colombia from 1975, New York from 1980, exhibitions from the 1980s onwards, and Spain's most prominent art award in 2019. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Cecilia Vicuña?
She went for a year, and could not come back.
She was born in Santiago and raised in the Maipo valley, into a family with several artists and writers in it. From 1957 she learned English at a school in the city, and made large abstract paintings in her first studio, which her father built for her in their garden. In 1966 she went to architecture school at the University of Chile and switched to the fine arts school. The following year she founded an artists' group and a Mexican magazine published her first poem. She was eighteen.
She took her master's at the University of Chile in 1971 and in 1972 moved to London on a British Council award, to study at the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1973 she went into exile there following the events in Chile of that year, and she stayed. In 1975 she left London for Bogota to do independent research into indigenous art and culture, travelling through Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil, and was invited to make stage designs for two theatre companies there. In 1980 she moved to New York.
The work is made from very little. Her quipus are knotted and unknotted strings, after the Andean recording device, hung at the scale of a room. Her precarios are small assemblages of natural and fragile materials, made to be temporary. She works as a poet as well, in what she calls palabrarmas. Critics read the whole body of it against displacement and exile, and against ecological loss, and her feminist methods are treated as the thread running through all of it. She exhibited in New York museums in the 1980s and had solo exhibitions across the United States through the 1990s. In 2019 she received Spain's most prominent art award, whose jury cited her work as poet, visual artist and campaigner and her art's interaction with the earth, written language and weaving, and the same year she was an invited guest artist at the CERN physics laboratory.
The moments
Cecilia Vicuña's timeline.
The 1940s
Born in Santiago
Everyday. A valley outside Santiago, and a family of writers.
The 1950s
A studio in the garden
Milestone, and it changed everything. Her father built her a studio in the garden, which is the whole permission she needed.
The 1960s
She switches to fine art
Milestone, and it changed her direction. She started in architecture and moved across the road.
A first poem at eighteen
Milestone, and it changed everything. A group founded and a poem published, in the same year, at eighteen.
The 1970s
A master's in Santiago
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The degree finished, in her own city, before any of it changed.
London, on an award
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A scholarship, a plane, and a school in another country.
She cannot go home
Setback, and it changed everything. She had gone for a course. She could not come back.
Research in Colombia
Milestone, and it changed everything. She could not go to Chile, so she went to learn what she could of the continent.
Stay in London
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: go back to the continent, taken, or stay where she was safe. She travelled through Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil, and the indigenous forms she studied became the centre of her work.
The 1980s
New York
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A third country, and the museums began to show the work.
The 1990s
The quipus and the precarios
Milestone, and it changed everything. Knotted string and found materials, hung at the size of a room.
The 2010s
Spain's biggest art award
Milestone, and it changed everything. The biggest art prize in the Spanish-speaking world, at seventy one.
A knotted string and a handful of found materials are still the whole toolkit, fifty years on. What it has set moving is the argument her materials make on their own: that the fragile, the temporary and the handmade are not lesser things, and that a person with almost nothing can still record what happened.
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Cecilia Vicuña: frequently asked questions
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What is Cecilia Vicuña's character arc?
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What are Cecilia Vicuña's quipus?
What did Cecilia Vicuña do in Colombia?
What award did Cecilia Vicuña win in 2019?
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Where does this timeline of Cecilia Vicuña's life come from?
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Sources
- Cecilia Vicuña, English Wikipedia biography, filed under living people.
- Premio Velazquez de Artes Plasticas records, 2019.
- Exhibition records for Precarious, El Ande Futuro and Cloud-Net.