Cecilia Vicuña: Brain Forest Quipu

I had the extraordinary good fortune to be invited to London for the holidays just past — which means I had the opportunity to visit the Tate Modern and see Cecilia Vicuña’s installation in the Turbine Hall.

To borrow from the museum’s text, “For Vicuña, textile in the form of Quipu— knotted lengths of cloth of all kinds — is nothing less than a vehicle affording a relationship to the cosmos.

At the centre of Brain Forest Quipu are two sculptures that hang 27 metres from the ceiling. They are woven together using a range of organic materials, including found objects, unspun wool, plant fibres, rope and cardboard to evoke the look of bleached-out trees and ghostly forms.” One reviewer called them “mudlarking finds,” not an expression one gets to use very often.

Vicuña approached the work as a collaboration, working alongside artists, activists and members of the community to source the raw material and develop the layered audio and digital aspects. I’m writing this entry having just listened to Margaret Wertheim speak at Craft Contemporary here in Los Angeles about her repeated struggles convincing museums to acknowledge the numerous collaborators on the Coral Reef Project, as if valued art could only be the product of a sole genius, working in isolation. The Tate Modern seems to have taken an enlightened stance on this question–which is even more apt given the overall premise of the piece as a metaphor of a collective, externalized brain.

Vicuña created the soundscape with Columbian composer Ricardo Gallo. It brings together Indigenous music from around the world, Vicuña’s own voice and music from fellow artists, alongside field recordings of nature and moments of silence. On digital screens, Vicuña presents a collection of videos by Indigenous activists and land defenders seeking justice for their people and our planet.

‘The Earth is a brain forest, and the quipu embraces all its interconnections,’ Vicuña says.

“Through this installation, the artist asks visitors to think about the destruction of our forests, the impact of climate change, violence against Indigenous people, and how we can come together to make change and begin a process of repair.” (quoting the Tate, again) The whiteness, shroud-like whiteness, and wispy quality against the industrial and dark-black chasm of the Tate’s interior architecture made for a powerful pairing.

The current issue of Crafts magazine (from the Crafts Council UK, highly recommend this publicaiton!) opens with a quote from Cecilia, “Word is thread and the thread is language,” and features a stunning long form article written by Julia Bryan-Wilson. One quote stuck with me: “the craft now is not just to work with our hands but to work with each other in our desire to live, to take care of the soil which is toxic and dying: to weave our awareness.” Cecilia champions art’s entangled social and material values; her quipus model social action, poetry, music and art. The work is up through April 16, 2023.