QUIPUS / QUIPUS

Quipu, (quipo, khipu), knot in Quechua*

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 system of sightlines connecting all communities in the Andes, were banished after the Conquest. Quipus were burnt, but the vision of interconnectivity, a poetic resistance endures underground.

The "quipu that remembers nothing," an empty cord was my first precario (c. l966). Today, I continue to create metaphorical iterations of the quipu.

Cecilia Vicuña

*Khipu are knotted textile record-keeping devices historically used in the region of Andean South America, consisting of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings. Quipu cords contained numeric and other values encoded by knots in a base ten positional system not yet deciphered. The quipu records included tax obligations, census data, calendrical information, military organization, as well as music, poems and historical narratives. (Wikipedia and Harvard Khipu project)

El Hilo Azul (1972)
London Quipu (1974)
Quipu in the Gutter (1989)
Quipu Semiyo (2000)
Dis solving Threads of Water and Light (2002)
Springs (2002)
Quipu Menstrual (2006)
Skyscraper Quipu (2006)
Cable Telefónico Quipu (2006)
Truck Quipu (2010)
Quipu Austral (2012)
Quipu Aural (2012)
Quipu Austral (2013)
Quipu Rojo (2014)
Quipu de Lamentos (2014)

El Hilo Azul (1972)

Con Con, Chile

Learn more about El Hilo Azul in this conversation between artist Cecilia Vicuña and curator Justo Pastor Mellado, as part of her her installation, La Pieza del Hilo Azul, for the exhibition "Transferencia y Densidad" (curated by Mellado at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago de Chile, 2000). This work, commisioned especially for the 2000 exhibition, recreated El Hilo Azul, one of Vicuña's first weavings in space, from January, 1972 in Con Con, Chile.

Woven in the artist's bedroom.

"Tired of my room's normality I have criss-crossed it with a blue thread...taut and geometrical as a sky to communicate with other worlds."

Stupid Diary, January 22, 1972

London Quipu (1974)

"Journal of Objects for the Chilean Resistance," Arts Meeting Place, London, UK

Quipu in the Gutter (1989)

Beach Street, New York, NY

Learn more about this quipu and more in Vicuña's "autobiography in debris," QUIPOem.

Quipu Semiyo (2000)

"Semiya," Galería Gabriella Mistral, Santiago, Chile

View the film Semiya / Seed Song
View the film Semiya (2000)
View the interview Semiya by Galerías y Gente, Full Canal

detail from Quipu Semiyo (2000)

Dis solving Threads of Water and Light (2002)

Drawing Center, New York, NY
A dual exhibition with César Paternosto

Read the exhibition catalogue

Springs (2002)

Hedda Sterne Studio, Springs Award, Springs, NY

Quipu Menstrual (2006)

El Plomo Glacier, Chile

Skyscraper Quipu (2006)

New York, NY

Cable Telefónico Quipu (2006)

"Multiplicación," Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, MAC, Santiago, Chile

Truck Quipu (2010)

Con cón, Chile

Still photo from the film, Kon kon pi (2010)

Quipu Austral (2012)

18th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Learn more about the film,

My installation, Quipu Austral, on Cockatoo Island, is on the south-east corner of the upper island and faces the sunrise. It is on the top floor of Building 19, a dilapidated timber drying facility, with no walls, that was used during the Island's shipyard building era. It is composed of two elements: unspun wool tied to the cross beams in 'quipu' knots, and a sound recording of my voice chanting my poems, coming out of four loudspeakers placed on the high cross beams.

I intend it as a prayer for the union of the world, emerging from the commonality of worldviews of the ancient peoples of South America and Australia who created societies based on the beauty of exchange, in other words, relationships based on equality and freedom. In 2011, I commissioned a wool producer from Tasmania to prepare the long, unspun streams--which vary from five to two metres long--of sheep's wool, dyed to my specifications. The colours were inspired by the palette in Aboriginal paintings and range from pale yellows to the colour of red earth.

I began making these 'quipu' knots as a teenager living in Chile. 'Quipus' are a system of 'writing' with knots and coloured threads that was created in the Andes more than 5,000 years ago (which makes them perhaps older than writing). It was in use until the Spanish Conquest of South America in the 15th century. Soon after, it was abolished. So, for me, it was an act of rebellion to begin again the process of speaking through the threads. I felt passionate about ancient art around the world, especially admiring the rock paintings of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, which is some of the oldest art on earth.

I called my installation Quipu Austral to emphasise the connectedness between the arts of the Southern Hemisphere, which share a metaphysical orientation. The quipu had a virtual counterpart: the 'ceqe,' which means 'line' in Quechua, an Andean language. It was a concept connecting all communities to the sacred sites in the land, usually water. I was struck by the parallels between the 'ceqe' and the Dreamtime songlines of the Aboriginal Australians. Both these oral traditions imply an ethical and aesthetic way of being that sustains the fertility of the land. We are now pushing the earth to a very dangerous unsustainability, so it is time for us to hear the ancient voices in a new way.

For me, it was like a dream come true to be part of the 18th Biennale of Sydney: 'all our relations'. Over the years I have often written that there is a deep human desire for fair relationships, and this need should be the basis of all exchanges. If art is understood as an expression of this desire, it can become again, as it was in the past, an ethical model, a place for reflection.

I met Catherine de Zegher in 1990, when she was part of a group of curators / explorers from Belgium who travelled around Latin America searching for its hidden arts. They created an exhibition, "America, The Bride of the Sun," in Belgium in 1992, focusing on the relationships between the arts of Europe and the Americas after the 'Spanish Conquest'. I was included in that exhibition and shortly after that Catherine wrote a book about my work. I first knew Gerald McMaster as an artist, and then later heard from Catherine that they were working together as co-curators on the Biennale project. He came to my studio in New York in 2011, and we had an extraordinary conversation about the quipu and its implications. Both he and Catherine felt my work 'belonged' to the exhibition, as I had been exploring the concept of the 'quipu' for over 40 years.

My ‘quipu’ is a poem in space, unlike any ‘quipu’ that existed before. It is constructed with unspun wool which symbolises the 'not yet' state from which everything is born. When people walk through it, they themselves become the 'knots', the carriers of memory.

The wind and sunlight move through the installation, interacting with the unspun threads. As the piece is slowly destroyed by the elements, the prayer is activated. This is why it is a participatory piece. There is no outside or inside, but rather all is intertwined in a constant exchange. For example, when we first installed the threads a violent southerly wind came, pulling fragments of wool onto the floor and thus creating new patterns. This was not planned, but it greatly increased the beauty and power of the piece.

In January, while I was in Chile, I asked the Chilean musician, my friend, José Pérez de Arce, to record me as I chanted and improvised sounds that spoke to water and threads. In the Andes, thread is a metaphor for water, the thread of life. The sources of fresh water are drying up all over the world, therefore the Quipu Austral's prayer. I also asked José to include his voice, responding to my chant, as well as the ambient soundscape of Chile.

I grew up in a very traditional family of artists of mixed European and Andean ancestry. Our home was filled with books in many languages and fantastic art books and encyclopedias which I devoured. My education was thoroughly European, but there was another side to the story. I felt that even the European side of my family had become attuned to the Andes, after being there since the 17th century. As a result I read the European avant garde, Dada and the Surrealists as a confirmation of the power of poetry to reconnect people to the ancient memories of the land. As an artist poet I began working in Chile in the mid 1960's, creating precarious works on the beach that disappeared with high tide, under the combined influence of the Andes and Dada.

[from Gleanings by Moira Roth, commissioned by the 18th Biennale of Sydney, June 2012]