It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of imminent ecological disaster, but there are little things you can do: recycle, avoid single-use plastics, drive an electric car, or make enormous sculptures out of wool. That’ll help.
It’s what Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña has done, and she’s suspended two of them from the ceiling of the Turbine Hall. Both are made from long strands of twisted white fabric: wool and rope and string and nets, tied into knots, twined around stones and sticks.
These are modern ‘quipu’, an ancient Andean form of pre-written communication, recording stories by tying knots. In these quiet, subtle, monochrome works, Vicuña is recording the story of the devastation of our planet, the destruction of nature, ecological collapse, all soundtracked by the sound of birdsong and pulses of electronic music. The sculptures are like dead trees in a forest, tombstones for the destruction of indigenous culture.
Vicuña is part-activist, part-artist, and has spent her life fighting fascism and injustice and creating a body of indigenous-inspired minimal sculpture in the process.
But these two works are totally dwarfed by the space. They’re lost in the Turbine Hall, the place looks empty, unfinished, like they ran out of budget. It’s all so slight that you barely notice it’s there. This could have been an impressive, impactful, emotive installation, but instead it's just a bit forgettable.
The message of this installation is important, vital, but these sculptures really don’t communicate it well.
