Her climate change art is finally being recognised: Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña and how the world finally caught up with her
- Vicuña created ‘land art’ before it became a movement; she was an eco-feminist before it became a term. Now, awareness of her work is steadily increasing
- This month, her art can be seen simultaneously in three Asian cities, including re-paintings she did of childhood artworks lost during Chile’s military coup
The black-and-white photo is dated 1966. It shows a girl aged 17, short-haired, square of jaw, drawing emphatic spirals on a beach in Chile with a large stick. Her creation, like the smaller sticks she places on the shoreline exactly where they’ll be washed away, won’t last. She doesn’t care.
Her name is Cecilia Vicuña. She’s certain that the sea is aware, the wind is aware, the light is aware and that she’s connected to all of them.
You, however, probably aren’t aware of Vicuña. Until recently – and she’s the first to say it – her recognition as an artist beyond Latin America has been limited. For more than half a century, she’s been honouring lost cultures, lost objects, lost glaciers, lost languages, lost people. In the process, she was almost lost too.
She created “land art” before it became a movement; she was an eco-feminist before it became a term. Those little sticks in the sand would evolve over decades into a body of work she called Los Precarios – a collection of fragile, transient offerings, made to disappear. But being a pioneer, especially a female one, can be a lonely business. When she held exhibitions about what wasn’t yet called climate change, few showed much interest.
Now the art world is catching up. In 2017, her solo exhibition, “About to Happen”, began a tour of the United States; the same year, she took part in an influential art exhibition called “Documenta”, which is held every five years in Germany.
