The enormous empty space of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern has been a challenge and inspiration for artists to fill with novel, thought-provoking, immersive or interactive installations for over 20 years. Latest artist to rise to the challenge is Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña and her installation is titled ‘Brain Forest Quipu’.
Installation view of ‘Brain Forest Quipu’ by Cecilia Vicuña at Tate Modern. Photo © Tate Photography (Sonal Bakrania)
Biography
From Wikipedia:
Cecilia Vicuña (born 1948) is a Chilean poet and artist based in New York and Santiago, Chile. Her work is noted for themes of language, memory, dissolution, extinction and exile. Critics also note the relevance of her work to the politics of ecological destruction, cultural homogenization, and economic disparity, particularly the way in which such phenomena disenfranchise the already powerless. Her commitment to feminist forms and methodologies is considered to be a unifying theme across her diverse body of work, among which quipus, palabrarmas and precarious stand out. Her practice has been specifically linked to the term eco-feminism.
Overarching title – ‘Brain Forest Quipu’
Only slowly did I realise the complex nature of Vicuña’s piece. Her project is given the overarching title ‘Brain Forest Quipu’ and consists of four separate and discrete elements, being:
- the sculpture – the ‘Dead Forest Quipu’
- the soundscape – the ‘Sound Quipu’
- the videos – the ‘Digital Quipu’
- the series of events – the ‘Quipu of Encounters: Rituals and Assemblies’
The sculpture – the ‘Dead Forest Quipu’
The main thing to see and respond to is the two separate installations, one above the sloping entrance ramp, the other the other side of the bridge, in the main hall space.
Both are huge ‘mobiles’, circular frames near the ceiling from which hang 27-metre long cascades of material. These include long strands of unspun wool and plant fibres and rope, among which hang a range of organic materials, found objects, cardboard and whatnot. These ‘curtains’ tower over visitors, evoking huge ancient trees of some imaginary rainforest or ancient mangrove swamp.
Installation view of ‘Brain Forest Quipu’ by Cecilia Vicuña at Tate Modern. Photo by the author
What is a quipu?
The quipu is an ancient South American recording and communication system made from knotted threads. Best to quote Vicuña herself on the subject:
‘In the Andes people did not write, they wove meaning into textiles and knotted cords. Five thousand years ago they created the quipu (knot), a poem in space, a way to remember, involving the body and the cosmos at once. A tactile, spatial metaphor for the union of all. The quipu, and its virtual counterpart, the ceque (a system of sightlines connecting all communities in the Andes) were banished after the European Conquest. Quipus were burnt, but the quipu did not die, its symbolic dimension and vision of interconnectivity endures in Andean culture today.’
Or:
The quipu (also written as khipu) is an ancient recording and communication system. It was used by the Quechua people of the Andes from 2500 BC through to the 16th century at the time of the Spanish conquest. Quipu means ‘knot’ in the Quechua language and consisted of a long textile cord from which hung multiple strands knotted into different formations and in different colours that were able to encode as much complex information as the alphabet. Although the exact meanings behind the knot formations are not now known, it is thought that they were used to record statistics, poems and stories, thereby creating a tactile relationship to memory and the imaginary. Cecilia Vicuña has been exploring and transforming the quipu in her work for over five decades. Her knots and materials are unlike the traditional form but inspired by it. Vicuña’s quipus work conceptually as sculptures, poems, performance, sound, and film, where a word, a gesture, or a group becomes a knot.
Ecofeminism
Part of Vicuña’s ecofeminism is an emphasis on collaborative, communal work, in contrast to the western idea of the isolated creative genius. Thus all aspects of the piece are collaborative: Vicuña has worked with London-based artists, activists and members of the Chilean community. Some of the objects incorporated into the sculptures were collected from the banks of the Thames (which, of course, flows just a hundred yards from the Turbine Hall) by women from local Latin American communities. Like so many 20th century artists she is incorporating found, damaged and everyday objects and fabrics into the work, materials that Vicuña calls precarios.
In this respect – artistic fascination with junk, detritus, the wreckage of our destructive civilisation – she is very reminiscent of Mike Nelson, whose impressive installations are currently on show about a mile down the Thames at the Hayward Gallery.
The soundscape – the ‘Sound Quipu’
There’s music, too. Vicuña worked with Colombian composer Ricardo Gallo to create created the soundscape i.e. New Age-ish, South American-inflected, pan pipes-type ambient sounds which are broadcast across the hall. The soundtrack includes Indigenous music from around the world, Vicuña’s own voice and music from fellow artists, alongside field recordings of nature and moments of silence.
It consists of 4 stereo tracks of approximately 8 hours each, containing 168 sound files from 23 contributors and 1 archive (played from within the ‘Dead Forest Quipu’); and one 8 hours quadraphonic sound file (played underneath the Turbine Hall bridge). There’s an intimidatingly long list of all the contributors and details of every track if you go to the Exhibition Guide page and select SOUND QUIPO. The one thing you can’t access, slightly irritatingly, is the actual soundtracks themselves.
This video gives a good sense of the sight and sound and shape of the whole piece:
The videos – the ‘Digital Quipu’
According to the wall label there are also videos by Indigenous activists and land defenders seeking justice for their people and our planet although, in walking from the installation hanging above the entrance ramp to the one in the main hall, I don’t think I noticed this. But then the Turbine Hall is quite a disorientating place, with hordes of people trekking across, either coming in or going out or walking across to the ticket office, or walking from there over to the lifts to the galleries.
Tate Modern is the most popular modern art gallery in the world with over five and a half million visitors each year. Pause to watch the video or look up into the dizzying height of the installation and you’re likely to be run over by coach parties of tourists.
Save the rainforest
For as long as I can remember good-hearted people have been earnestly campaigning to save the rainforests. This was a campaign when I was at university 40 years ago. A friend went to work for the WWF rainforest campaign 40 years ago. In terms of popular campaigning and awareness, Sting, Paul Simon and Neil Young all made albums or tracks on the subject 30 or 40 years ago. Numerous charities have been beavering away. Countless documentaries.
Despite all this the destruction of the Amazon rainforest (and rainforests around the world) continues apace. The Amazon in particular still appears to be being destroyed to create land where farmers can grow soya and ranch cattle to provide America with cheap burgers and fries.
Sadness
Therefore, of the many ways the wall labels suggest we respond to the installations (to create a space for new voices and forms of knowledge to be heard and understood, to become aware of the struggles of Indigenous peoples) the most likely or compelling one is mourning: if you do stop to think about the subject, it will be to mourn the destruction of the forests, the runaway catastrophe of climate change, and the complete deracination of the powerless Indigenous peoples.
This appears to be why the installation is titled ‘Dead Forest Quipu’. The stripped-bare feel of the dangling frames symbolising the destruction of green life, its transformation to metal skeletons and dry brown husks, bone-white of the objects representing the bleached bark of trees killed by drought or intentional fire.
Installation view of ‘Brain Forest Quipu’ by Cecilia Vicuña at Tate Modern. Photo © Tate Photography (Sonal Bakrania)
Social weaving – the ‘Quipu of Encounters: Rituals and Assemblies’
Not that you actually see this on your visit but apparently the installation is being accompanied by a series of global events, or ‘knots of action’, connecting ancient Andean tradition and contemporary culture, inviting visitors to become active participants in the prevention of climate catastrophe.
Tears of the forest
Maybe the sculptures should have been made waterproof and had a continual trickle of water running down every strand, dripping into enormous pools at the bottom, to symbolise the million tears wept for the loss of the planet’s lungs and all those irreplaceable species.
The promotional video
Related links
- Cecilia Vicuña: Brain Forest Quipu continues at Tate Modern until 16 April 2023
- Exhibition guide
- The Sixth Extinction by Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin (1995)
- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert (2014)
Books & Boots 