Text by Andrea Andersson, Lucy Lippard, Macarena Gómez-Barris. Interview by Julia Bryan-Wilson.
A new edition of artist-poet Cecilia Vicuña’s artist's book on the politics of the sea
Beginning and ending at the edge of the ocean at the sacred mouth of the Aconcagua River, About to Happen serves as a lament as well as love letter to the sea. In this artist's book, Chilean-born artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña weaves personal and ancestral memory while summoning the collective power to confront the economic disparities and environmental crises of the 21st century.
Collecting the detritus that washes up on shore, Vicuña assembles out of the refuse tiny precarios and basuritas—little sculptures held together with nothing more than string and wire, which she sometimes makes as offerings to be reclaimed by the sea.
About to Happen traces a decades-long practice that has refused categorical distinctions and thrived within the confluences of conceptual art, land art, feminist art, performance and poetry. Vicuña's nuanced visual poetics—operating fluidly between concept and craft, text and textile—transforms the discarded into the elemental, paying acute attention to the displaced, the marginalized and the forgotten.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
New York Times
Ray Mark Rinaldi
The works draw attention to the most basic details of the environment, and there is an implication in them that once you are acutely aware of any object, you are responsible for its welfare… Awareness of a stick leads to awareness of a tree, then to land and the people who occupy it, to the fragility of entire cultures.
Artsy
Claire Mullen
For over Five Decades, Cecilia Vicuña Has Made Prescient, Rebellious Art.
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Featured image, from Chilean-born artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña’s “Precarious Improvisation,” Con cón, Chile (2009), is reproduced from About to Happen, Vicuña’s poetic, avidly sought-after artist’s book/exhibition catalog, back in stock at last from Siglio Press. “Respectfully sharing a spiritual approach with her indigenous sources, Vicuña sees herself as the receptacle of ancient knowledge, which she then translates into a very contemporary idiom,” Lucy Lippard writes. “Her art is not easily categorized. She’s neither a poet who makes art, nor an artist who writes poetry. Her art is a naturally fused amalgam of word and act in which she not only translates, but becomes an archaeologist of language, excavating, dissecting, recreating meaning and communicating it to the inhabitants of today.” Photograph is by James O’Hern. continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 8 x 8 in. / 160 pgs / 100 color / 8 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $29.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $39.95 GBP £27.00 ISBN: 9781938221231 PUBLISHER: Siglio AVAILABLE: 8/20/2019 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Siglio. Text by Andrea Andersson, Lucy Lippard, Macarena Gómez-Barris. Interview by Julia Bryan-Wilson.
A new edition of artist-poet Cecilia Vicuña’s artist's book on the politics of the sea
Beginning and ending at the edge of the ocean at the sacred mouth of the Aconcagua River, About to Happen serves as a lament as well as love letter to the sea. In this artist's book, Chilean-born artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña weaves personal and ancestral memory while summoning the collective power to confront the economic disparities and environmental crises of the 21st century.
Collecting the detritus that washes up on shore, Vicuña assembles out of the refuse tiny precarios and basuritas—little sculptures held together with nothing more than string and wire, which she sometimes makes as offerings to be reclaimed by the sea.
About to Happen traces a decades-long practice that has refused categorical distinctions and thrived within the confluences of conceptual art, land art, feminist art, performance and poetry. Vicuña's nuanced visual poetics—operating fluidly between concept and craft, text and textile—transforms the discarded into the elemental, paying acute attention to the displaced, the marginalized and the forgotten.
