Decolonising Artistic Resistance: Cecilia Vicuña’s Poetics of Memory and Land Reclamation in Whitechapel’s Structural Erasure of Indigenous Feminist Aesthetics
Original framing: “Cecilia Vicuña Whitechapel Gallery A Quiet Defiance – Sue Hubbard” — bing news
Vicuña’s art is deeply spiritual, drawing from Mapuche cosmologies where language, land, and spirituality are interconnected. Her *poesía visual* is not just a visual or textual practice but a spiritual act of reclamation, where the act of creating and engaging with the work is an act of resistance against erasure. The *cancionero* as a medium is a physical manifestation of this spirituality, as it carries the weight of oral traditions and ancestral knowledge. The original framing reduces her work to a political or feminist statement, missing the spiritual dimension that grounds her practice in a broader cosmological framework.
Cecilia Vicuña’s exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery is not merely an artistic event but a deliberate intervention into the structural violence of colonialism and capitalism that permeates the art world.
Her work, rooted in Mapuche *wünelfe* and *poesía visual*, reveals how Indigenous knowledge systems function as tools of resistance against erasure, challenging the Western art historical canon that has long excluded these perspectives. The original framing’s focus on 'quiet defiance' obscures the radical potential of her practice, which disrupts institutional frameworks through its materiality, spirituality, and political urgency. Vicuña’s art offers a model for how decolonial practices can challenge the neocolonial structures of art institutions, inviting audiences to engage with the deeper historical and cultural layers of her work. By restoring the Indigenous, historical, and spiritual dimensions of her practice, we can move beyond a superficial understanding of her art and instead recognise it as a powerful tool for structural change and cultural survival.