{"id":4413,"date":"2021-02-19T17:02:55","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T08:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/?post_type=insights&p=4413"},"modified":"2021-02-19T17:02:55","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T08:02:55","slug":"quipu-girok-knot-record","status":"publish","type":"insights","link":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/insights\/4413","title":{"rendered":"Quipu Girok (Knot Record)"},"content":{"rendered":"

2021.2.18 – 4.24
\nCecilia Vicu\u00f1a<\/p>\n

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CECILIA VICU\u00d1A Ni\u00f1a Mapuche, 1975-2021 Photo lithograph on mulberry paper with bamboo and red thread 30 x 20 inches Photo by Dan Bradica Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce Quipu Girok, an exhibition of new work by Chilean artist Cecilia Vicu\u00f1a featuring her first \u201cpainted\u201d quipu, a recent video, hand-painted prints, drawings, and an installation of precarios that will engage a dialogue between Korean and Andean textile traditions and techniques. An artist, filmmaker, poet, and activist based in New York, Vicu\u00f1a\u2019s work ranges from performance, to painting, to poetry, to large-scale installations that address pressing concerns of the modern world, including ecological destruction, human rights, and cultural homogenization. The exhibition marks Vicu\u00f1a\u2019s second with the gallery and is her first solo presentation in Asia. Quipu Girok will coincide with the Gwangju Biennial, which will feature a selection of Vicu\u00f1a\u2019s paintings from the 1970s and a number of textile prints. These prints are a recreation of a series of paintings on fabric that the artist produced from 1975-1977 as an homage to the women who served in the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

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Cecilia Vicu\u00f1a: Quipu Girok (Knot Record) Installation view, Lehmann Maupin Seoul February 18 \u2013 April 24, 2021 \u200bPhoto by OnArt Studio Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The title Quipu Girok combines ancient Andean language and Korean, loosely translating to Knot (quipu) Record (girok). The quipu\u2014an Andean method of visual-tactile communication and record-keeping system involving the knotting of colored strings\u2014has featured prominently throughout Vicu\u00f1a\u2019s oeuvre since the 1960s and 70s. In the artist\u2019s varied renditions, the quipu becomes a conceptual and performative poem in space, an act of resistance based on Vicu\u00f1a\u2019s desire to recover the lost history of this ancient form of writing. The centerpiece of the exhibition, from which it takes its name, is Quipu Girok\u2014a large-scale quipu installation comprised of columns of painted gauze (reminiscent of ancient forms of indigenous painting on weaving), silk polyester (hanbok), and cotton (used in traditional Korean textiles) that hang vertically from uneven bamboo sticks. Each panel of transparent fabric is painted using pigment and pastel crayon to create a multi-layered work inspired by a series of Solar paintings the artist created during the 1970s. These paintings, like the installation Quipu Girok, feature simplified marks and geometric signs and symbols that recall the very beginning of painting on textiles in the pre-Columbian Andes. For Vicu\u00f1a, these early artworks (forms of visualcommunication) are \u201cabstract in a very profound sense.\u201d As with poetry, there is a general sense of what the image signifies while its specific reference point remains unknown.<\/p>\n

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Cecilia Vicu\u00f1a: Quipu Girok (Knot Record) Installation view, Lehmann Maupin Seoul February 18 \u2013 April 24, 2021 \u200bPhoto by OnArt Studio Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Vicu\u00f1a\u2019s early Solar paintings also led to the creation of her ongoing series of small sculptural installations called Lo Precario (the precarious), visual poems that utilize feathers, stones, wood, shells, cloth, and other human-made detritus. These poetically tiny sculptures are often loosely fastened together with string, emphasizing their fragility and impermanence and giving the impression that the materials have assembled by themselves. In each precario, Vicu\u00f1a combines objects gathered and sourced from her travels over the years, imparting a geographic and temporal ambiguity to these works. For the exhibition Quipu Girok, Vicu\u00f1a will create one of her archetypal precario installations but will incorporate new elements. This new work, a hybrid installation comprised of precario sculptures, features precarios\/drawings that incorporate line, gesture, and found materials on a single sheet of handmade paper, as well as a precario\/video that combines a wire \u201cvest\u201d with woven butterflies and a video on an iPad. The video documents the artist\u2019s performance wearing this vest while walking along the bank of the Hudson River, an ancient migratory route for Monarch butterflies whose existence is in danger due to climate change, pesticide use, and habitat loss. Vicu\u00f1a describes her precarios as a form of prayer, \u201cuncertain, exposed to hazards, insecure. From the Latin precarious, from pr\u00e9cis, prayer.\u201d Each aspect of the precario installation holds its own history, materiality, and language that offers a global understanding of the environmental effects of pollution and masses of post-consumer waste.<\/p>\n

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Cecilia Vicu\u00f1a: Quipu Girok (Knot Record) Installation view, Lehmann Maupin Seoul February 18 \u2013 April 24, 2021 \u200bPhoto by OnArt Studio Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Video has played an important role in Vicu\u00f1a\u2019s practice as documentation of performances, components of installations, and poetic works in their own right. Much of Vicu\u00f1a\u2019s moving image work refers to the fragility of ecosystems and mourns the extinction of species as a result of human abuse. For Quipu Girok, Vicu\u00f1a has included a recent video, Que la verdad despierte\/ Let truth awake, which depicts a flag Ver Dad (1974\/2020) blowing in the wind in Marfa, TX against the sound of Vicuna\u2019s haunting incantations and music composed and performed by Ricardo Gallo. The imagery is a recreation of a 1974 drawing made while the artist was living in London, in exile from the Pinochet regime in Chile. Placed at the center of an eye is the Spanish word \u201cver,\u201d which translates to \u201cto see,\u201d alongside the Spanish word \u201cdad\u201d in the palm of a hand. Put together \u201cverdad\u201d translates to \u201ctruth.\u201d The flag, first exhibited at Ballroom Marfa in Unflagging (October 2020), is an offering for us to see the truth of this moment.<\/p>\n

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CECILIA VICU\u00d1A Girl with Book and Gun, 1975-2021 Photo lithograph on mulberry paper with bamboo and red thread 30 x 20 inches Photo by Dan Bradica Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though composed of work produced within the last year, Quipu Girok is an exhibition rooted in history\u2014that of Vicu\u00f1a\u2019s own practice, which includes the revival of lost or destroyed works, and ancient traditions in weaving, image making, and record keeping. The artist\u2019s complex, ephemeral poems in space combine the history and tactile ritual of weaving and spinning with assemblage, poetry, and performance. As with all of Vicu\u00f1a\u2019s work, this exhibition is a poetic interpretation of time and place where global histories, ancient and contemporary memory, and multiple languages come together and where textiles meet in an act of generosity and love.<\/p>\n

Lehmann Maupin
\n74-18, Yulgok-ro 3-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea
\n+82 2 725 0094<\/p>\n

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