Cecilia Vicuña

Cecilia Vicuña has generously produced El Pueblo Unido,1973-74/2023, a limited edition artwork in support of Tate.

For her limited edition, Vicuña draws on memories of her time in London while in exile from 1973-75. The work depicts 12 pieces of wallpaper which she tore from the walls of her London flat. On each piece of wallpaper, she wrote a part of the phrase 'El pueblo unido jamás será vencido' which is the title of a Chilean protest song written by Sergio Ortega Alvarado and Quilapayún. The phrase translates to 'The people united will never be defeated' and has been adopted by various political movements around the world. The wallpaper pieces are treated like a deck of cards, intended to be dealt and rearranged to create new words and meaning. They are part of a larger work, Precarios: A Journal of Objects for the Chilean Resistance, 1973–4, which is in the Tate collection and currently on display in Tate Britain.

Each print is signed and numbered by the artist and comes unframed. Prices of the artwork are liable to change. As a limited edition sells out, prices of the artwork are subject to increase and the price will be clearly indicated.

• Artist Cecilia Vicuña
• Artwork El Pueblo Unido
• Dimensions 70.4 x 52 cm
• Material Digital pigment print with screen-printed varnish on paper
• Edition Edition of 50, signed and numbered on the front
• Date of work 1973-74/2023

Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948 Santiago, Chile) is a Chilean Indigenous mestizo artist poet. Since the late 1960s she has created poems, paintings, sculpture, and film to explore and create alternative systems of knowledge that respect the Indigenous traditions that are a part of her heritage, while finding new ways to form connections with others and in response to pressing concerns of the modern world, including ecological destruction, human rights, and cultural homogenization. Vicuña studied Fine Art in the Escuela de Bellas Artes, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, and later completed her studies with a British Scholarship at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1972. After the military coup against former Chilean President Salvador Allende, Vicuña became a founding member of Artists for Democracy while continuing to live and work in exile in London until 1975. Afterwards she lived in Bogotá, Colombia until 1980. The sense of impermanence and a desire to preserve and pay tribute to the indigenous history and culture of Chile have characterised her work throughout her career.

Vicuña’s work has been exhibited all over the world and is in numerous international private and public collections. In 2022, Vicuña created Brain Forest Quipu, a multi-part installation made of sculpture, sound, music and video, for the Hyundi Commission in the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern. Vicuña returned to London to work on the installation with a team of local artisans and makers, and participants from local Latinx community.

Vicuña has published thirty-three volumes of art and poetry published in the United States, Europe, and Latin America and has received several awards including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2022). In 2015 Vicuña was appointed the messenger lecturer at Cornell University. She divides her time between Chile and New York.