Cecilia Vicuña

Trabajo: trabar desde abajo (Work Joins from Below) from the series AMAzone Palabrarmas

1978

Ink and pencil on paper

Not on view

Vicuña was studying in London at the time of the 1973 military coup in Chile. Exiled from her home country, she committed herself to activism from abroad and to the research of Indigenous cultures of the Americas. During a trip across the Amazon rainforest in 1977, she had a vision of a palabrarma : a “word- weapon” that would mobilize poetic language as a form of political resistance. Each drawing in this series is a playful reinvention of existing words, unfolding new meanings out of their parts.

Gallery label from

2022

Medium Ink and pencil on paper
Dimensions sheet: 8 1/2 × 11" (21.6 × 27.9 cm)
Credit Latin American and Caribbean Fund, Modern Women's Fund, gift of Agnes Gund, Amalia Amoedo, María Luisa Ferré Rangel (in honor of Cyril Meduña) and Juan Yarur Torres (in honor of Amalia Amoedo)
Object number 384.2021.5
Department Drawings and Prints

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