Threading Together Politics and Poetics in Cecilia Vicuna's Fiber Art

摘要

In 2006, Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuna carried thick-knotted red strands of unspun wool to Cerro EI Plomo, a glaciated peak outside of Santiago. Done in response to government-sanctioned acquisitions of gold and silver mines sitting under the glacier by a Canadian corporation, Vicuna's use of her quipu - an ancient mnemonic device - tied the historical disappearance of the Incan empire to an ecological devastation occurring in the new millennium. Her actions also referenced the Pinochet dictatorship, as well as her own exile when in 1979, she traveled to Colombia and with a red string tied to a glass of milk, spilled its contents in front of the historical home of the 19th century revolutionary leader Simon Bolivar. This pointed to the disappearance of the Allende government who promised a free milk distribution program in Chile and referenced the nearly 2,000 children who died from tainted milk in Bogota that same year. The connection between these two projects and much of Vicuna's work is the reliance on the thread - it critiques the military apparatus as much as it calls attention to those voices lost through colonization. I argue for an analysis of the textual layers existing within Vicuna's fiber art, from the seemingly banal strands used in her installations and performances to their integration into her lines of poetry featuring the indigenous language of Mapudungun from the Mapuche people. In examining how these constructed fibers enter into everyday language and metaphorically address issues around identity, my paper analyzes the discourse centered on disappearance and its ties to artistic production occurring in Vicuna's cross-cultural practice.