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    Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen

     
    Lower Level Gallery
    April 27, 2019 — September 15, 2019
    Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen, the first major United States solo exhibition of the influential Chilean-born artist, traces Vicuña’s career-long commitment to exploring discarded and displaced materials, peoples, and landscapes in a time of global climate change.
    Working within the overlapping discourses of conceptual art, land art, poetry, and feminist art practices, Vicuña (Chile, born 1948) has long refused categorical distinctions, operating fluidly between concept and craft, text and textile. The exhibition includes sculpture, installation, drawing, video, and text-based work from Vicuña’s practice since the late 1960s, weaving together the artist’s many artistic disciplines as well as communities with shared relationships to the land and sea. Reframing dematerialization as both a formal consequence of 1960s conceptualism and radical climate change, the exhibition examines a process that shapes public memory and responsibility.
    Vicuña’s work has been performed and exhibited inter/nationally as part of documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany, at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Santiago, The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and The Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, and The Whitney Museum of American Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. The author of 22 books, her poetry has been translated into several languages. Vicuña has lived between her native country of Chile and the United States since 1980.
    CREDITS

    Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen is organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans (CAC), and co-curated by Andrea Andersson, The Helis Foundation Chief Curator of Visual Arts at the CAC, and Julia Bryan-Wilson, Doris and Clarence Malo Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, University of California, Berkeley. The presentation at the Henry is organized by Nina Bozicnik, Associate Curator. Lead support for this exhibition is provided by the Walker Family Foundation. This project is also supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and by a gift from Virginia and Bagley Wright. Media sponsorship is provided by KUOW.

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    Related Programs

    <p>Cecilia Vicuña. <em>Kon Kon</em> (video still). 2010. Video: 54 minutes.</p>
    Screenings

    Poetry in Translation - Kon Kon

    September 11, 2019
    <p>Guest views works by Cecilia Vicuña during the opening of the artist's first major U.S. solo <a href="https://henryart.org/exhibitions/cecilia-vicu%C3%B1a-about-to-happen" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a><a href="https://henryart.org/exhibitions/cecilia-vicuña-about-to-happen">exhibition</a>, on view through September 15, 2019<em>.</em> Photo: Robert Wade.</p>
    Programs

    Writing Workshop: Precarios

    July 27, 2019
    <p>Inca culture. Peru. Bag. 1475-1532. Henry Art Gallery, Harriet Tidball Collection, 77.7-861. Photo: Emma High.</p>
    Talks & Performances

    From the Collection: Peruvian Textiles

    May 9, 2019
    <p>Cecilia Vicuña (Chile, born 1948). <em>Arco arrayán</em> (from the <em>Precarios </em>series). 1966-ongoing. Found-object sculpture. [Installation view, <em>Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen</em>, 2017. Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans.] Photo: Alex Marks.<br /></p>
    Talks & Performances

    Patron Preview - Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen

    April 26, 2019
    <p>Cecilia Vicuña (Chile, born 1948). <em>Balsa Snake Raft to Escape the Flood</em>, 2017. Site-specific installation with found materials sourced from New Orleans, Chile, and New York: debris, bamboo, willows, twigs, fishing line, beads, rope, net, styrofoam, plastic, and feathers. [Installation view, <em>Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen</em>, 2017. Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans.] Photo: Alex Marks.</p>
    Talks & Performances

    Public Opening - Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen

    April 26, 2019
    <p>Cecilia Vicuña. Photo: Daniela Aravena. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul.</p>
    Talks & Performances

    Performance & Conversation with Cecilia Vicuña

    April 27, 2019