Cecilia Vicuña on family, old paintings and ancient languages in new podcast
Chilean poet and visual artist Cecilia Vicuña shares the people, paintings and languages that shaped her in a new podcast conversation released on 7 October 2026.
The episode is called “A brush with Cecilia Vicuña”. It is part of The Art Newspaper’s A Brush With series, in which host Ben Luke talks to artists about their influences and cultural experiences. This one puts Vicuña centre stage The Art Newspaper.
Vicuña was born in 1948 in Santiago, Chile. She works both as a poet and as a visual artist across multiple media, meaning she makes work in many different forms rather than one single style.
In the conversation she looks back a long way. She talks about pre-Renaissance painting, the art made in Europe before about 1400, and about pre-Columbian art and languages, the cultures of the Americas before European contact. She also speaks about her aunt, the artist Rosa Vicuña, and about her admiration for Doris Salcedo, the Colombian sculptor known for large-scale installations.
She is 78. The stories move between childhood, family and much older histories.
The release is timed to two large solo exhibitions. “Cecilia Vicuña: Living Threads” is listed at the Whitechapel Gallery in London from 7 October to 14 February 2027. “Cecilia Vicuña: Quipu of Encounters: The Dream of Water” is listed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles from 15 November to 6 June 2027.
The episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture app.
For listeners new to her work, that London and Los Angeles timing helps. You can hear Vicuña in her own words first, then see how those threads, knots and poems play out in the gallery.
Many listeners may know her from London already. In 2022 she made Brain Forest Quipu for the Turbine Hall Commission at Tate Modern in London, the museum’s annual invitation to fill its vast entrance hall. The work used sculptures made from organic materials Tate.
Tate in London also lists works by Vicuña including Precarios: A Journal of Objects for the Chilean Resistance, Violeta Parra and Quipu Womb (The Story of the Red Thread, Athens) Tate.
