Cecilia Vicuña: Spin Spin Triangulene

Cecilia Vicuña: Spin Spin Triangulene is the first solo exhibition in the New York Museum for contemporary Chilean artist, poet, activist, and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948, Santiago). Showcasing Vicuña’s artistic production from the late 1960s to today, the exhibition at Guggenheim Museum features the breadth of her multidisciplinary practice, including paintings, works on paper, textiles, films, a site-specific Quipu (Knot) installation, the one-time performance of a “living” Quipu, and new paintings and works on paper created specifically for this presentation.
The title Spin Spin Triangulene is a poetic creation based on new scientific discoveries that the artist relates to the Guggenheim’s spiral rotunda and the quipu to stress the connection between science and Indigenous knowledge Vicuña has observed since her early encounter with cybernetics as a young student in Chile.
Vicuña explores themes of memory, language, science, and Indigenous spirituality and knowledge across her practice. Her early figurative paintings in this exhibition were conceived as a decolonizing act to subvert the oil tradition imposed on Indigenous culture by the European conquest. These works interweave her biography with the story of the rise of socialism.
Pablo León de la Barra organizes this exhibition, Curator at Large, Latin America, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, and Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães, Associate Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.
The exhibition will be on view until September 5, 2022. For more information, visit: https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/cecilia-vicuna-spin-spin-triangulene