Cecilia Vicuña: Towards a Contemporary Indigenism 1990-2010

In: https://digitalcollections.saic.edu/islandora/object/islandora%3A38347

Abstract

In this thesis, I examine representations of indigeneity in works by Chilean poet and visual artist, Cecilia Vicuña (1948- ) that address the changing political landscapes and art world contexts brought by global neoliberalism at the tum of the new century. Forced into exile as a young artist after the CIA-backed military coup installed Augusto Pinochet as dictator in 1973, Vicuña lived and worked in Bogota, Colombia before finally settling in New York City in 1980. An early supporter of Allende and one of the first to speak out against the dictatorship in exile, Vicuña's practice has always had a resolutely activist orientation; and in her mature practice, has largely drawn from the autobiographical and personal archives. It was not until she was physically removed from the Chilean landscape, however, that she began to incorporate aspects of indigenous Andean culture purposefully and consistently into her aesthetic forms - a period of time that also coincides with her introduction into the American feminist movement. As a result, the panorama of Vicuña's practice begins to paint a history of neoliberalism from its experimental beginnings in Chile to its adoption worldwide. lt becomes apparent that the politics of indigeneity that emerges in the historicization of its contemporary representations by Vicuña is one that was developed in response to the local consequences of neoliberal economics and its related global crises. I look to Vicuña's 1998-99 work, cloud-net, in which she positions indigenous Andean forms of knowledge production in response to rising questions around multiculturalism and global contemporary art starting to pervade American cultural institutions at that time. Returning to Chile and the developing water crisis there at the beginning of the 21 st century in works like El Quipu Menstrual, Vicuña presents a politics of indigeneity whose aesthetic forms point to more global implications. Drawing on an Andean repertoire and its ritual connotations, Vicuña practices a contemporary indigeneity whose political platform is rooted in notions of protest and collectivity. Finally, I demonstrate how her return to the ancestral eventually merges with a sense of futurism in her 20 l 0 documentary film, Kon Kon. I contend that this process of speculating indigenous futures is in Vicuña's practice intimately bound to the future of human life on this planet, as it strives to move beyond global neoliberal models.