Miami, FL
78°F, overcast clouds
Pérez Art Museum Miami
Introduction
Quipu Gut by Cecilia Vicuña is a large hanging red fabric sculpture made in 2017 of dyed unspun wool inspired by the ancient quipu system. The sculpture’s dimensions vary depending on the gallery space in which the work is installed. Within the double height gallery at Perez Art Museum Miami, the fabric sculpture hangs slightly off center from the gallery ceiling at a height of 30 feet.
A striking centerpiece within this gallery space, a tall structure of thick, bright red ropes hanging from the ceiling and has eight connecting points at the top of a wire circle frame and is knotted at different points in the fabric sculpture. s sculpture reaches from the ceiling to the floor, with the excess fabric lying on the gallery floor.
This piece is accompanied by a video component created by the artist in 2017. The video is visually displayed on the wall right of the entrance to this gallery on a 60-inch flat-screen monitor. In the film we see the artist working together with her crew through the ritual steps needed to install the work into the gallery space. From splitting the unspun wool into eight fabric pieces to chanting a prayer-like song with indigenous reference, and dancing and maneuverings around one another to tie the knots into the wool. The final step of this installation shows each Quipu rope being hung from the circle wire frame and the artist guides where these ropes will land and lay on the gallery floor. This Video provides guidance to guests and a deeper exploration of the concepts in Cecilia’s work.
More about Cecilia Vicuña and Quipus
Cecilia Vicuña has worked with quipus since the beginning of her career in the late 1960’s to early 1970’s. These devices, made from knotted strings have been used by several cultures in Andean South America to record information that could be read with both fingers and eyes. Her poems, installations, performances, and sculptures are connected in the messages they share. Vicuña has drawn on her own indigenous heritage to create work surrounding the practices, myths, and understanding of the Incan and earlier Andean people. The indigenous groups that live in the Andes Mountains, which stretch from Venezuela to the southern tip of South America. Vicuña uses these references to heritage to visually build connection between ancient memory and contemporary cultures.
Vicuña’s piece takes its name from the Quechua language, “quipu” meaning “knot.” A quipu is a special way of keeping records used by ancient people in the Andes, like the Inca. Each quipu was made of colorful strings that were knotted according to the number of objects being counted. This could be anything, like how many animals they had or how much food they grew.
Quipus were used by the Inca, but they weren’t the first to come up with the idea. People used quipus for thousands of years, even long before the Inca. Quipus work like a secret code, helping different groups of people who spoke different languages to communicate. The Inca used quipus to keep track of everything when they ruled a big area. When they conquered new lands, they’d send people to count everything, like streams, fields, and even people. All this information was recorded on quipus. These records helped them make decisions about how to manage their land. However, when Spanish Conquistadors came in the 1500s, they brought their own written and spoken language, and slowly, people stopped using quipus. The Spanish Conquistadors were also suspicious of the quipu and didn’t understand how they worked. The Catholic Church of Spain declared the quipu to be pagan, a religious belief system other than the main recognized Church and ordered quipus to be burned. The Inca were the last of the ancient Andean cultures to use this system.
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