A new edition of artist-poet Cecilia Vicuna's artist's book on the politics of the sea Beginning and ending at the edge of the ocean at the sacred mouth of the Aconcagua River, About to Happen serves as a lament as well as love letter to the sea. In this artist's book, Chilean-born artist and poet Cecilia Vicuna weaves personal and ancestral memory while summoning the collective power to confront the economic disparities and environmental crises of the 21st century. Collecting the detritus that washes up on shore, Vicuna assembles out of the refuse tiny precarios and basuritas-little sculptures held together with nothing more than string and wire, which she sometimes makes as offerings to be reclaimed by the sea. About to Happen traces a decades-long practice that has refused categorical distinctions and thrived within the confluences of conceptual art, land art, feminist art, performance and poetry. Vicuna's nuanced visual poetics-operating fluidly between concept and craft, text and textile-transforms the discarded into the elemental, paying acute attention to the displaced, the marginalized and the forgotten.
Reviews
The works draw attention to the most basic details of the environment, and there is an implication in them that once you are acutely aware of any object, you are responsible for its welfare... Awareness of a stick leads to awareness of a tree, then to land and the people who occupy it, to the fragility of entire cultures. -- Ray Mark Rinaldi * New York Times *
For over Five Decades, Cecilia Vicuna Has Made Prescient, Rebellious Art. -- Claire Mullen * Artsy *



Book Information
ISBN 9781938221231
Author Cecilia Vicuna
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Siglio Press
Publisher Siglio Press