IMMA is proud to present the first solo exhibition in Ireland by internationally renowned artist, poet, and activist Cecilia Vicuña

The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) is proud to unveil Reverse Migration, a Poetic Journey, the first solo exhibition in Ireland by internationally renowned artist, poet, and activist Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948, Santiago de Chile). This major survey of Vicuña’s practice features numerous new paintings and new commissions. Emerging from Vicuña’s discovery of her ancestral ties to Ireland, the exhibition is a monumental meditation on survival and interconnectedness amid global ecological and political upheaval.

Vicuña’s multidisciplinary practice bridges visual art, poetry, sound, and performance. Born and raised in Santiago de Chile, Vicuña has been in exile since the early 1970s, following the 1973 military coup against Chilean president Salvador Allende; and her career is characterised by a drive to preserve and pay tribute to the indigenous history and culture of Chile. Reverse Migration, a Poetic Journey is inspired by a visit to Ireland which she made in 2006 with her partner, poet James O’Hern, following Vicuña’s discovery of her genetic ties to the country, during which they honoured various archaeological sites with rituals of gratitude. This ancestral connection to Ireland is a narrative thread within the exhibition, which intertwines personal memory with indigenous traditions and a dialogue with Irish heritage.

Works on display span the breadth of Vicuña’s career, with an early section of the exhibition, curated by Miguel Lopez, featuring documentation of her early activism, performance and film works.

The exhibition includes significant examples of Vicuña’s precarios and quipus, two ongoing bodies of work since the 1960s, which have their origins in ancient Andean traditions. Central to the exhibition at IMMA is a site-specific quipu Aran Quipu – an ancient Andean system of record-keeping using knotted cords. Created with the participation of local makers, and made using Irish wool, the commission is a reference to the design of Aran sweater — thought to be symbolic of nature and the sea, as well as of the lives of Irish fishermen and Aran Islanders, for Vicuna the piece is a meditation on rising sea levels and the relationship of weaving and the sea. The work transforms the motif of the ancient quipu into a vessel for contemporary ecological and political discourse, suggesting the urgent need for collective action in the face of climate crisis.

Vicuña’s early canvases reflect an intuitive engagement with shamanic rituals. Brujo meaning “shaman” and the “soft geometry” inherent in Andean visual languages. These compositions are infused with references to Nasca textiles, pre-Columbian iconography, fungi, and myths surrounding altered states of consciousness, linking the ancestral with the visionary in a continuum of cultural memory.

Sound and poetry are integral to Vicuña’s artistic language and, for this exhibition, the artist has created a new sound work that embodies the oral traditions of indigenous cultures. Titled Mourning Dialog, the piece joins in sequence a recording of a Keener – a professional mourner – from the Aran Islands, with one of Vicuna’s own a capella musical performances which mourns the death of the glaciers.

Vicuña explores sound as a binding thread between people and histories, mirroring the themes of interconnection and fragility found throughout her practice; and her soundscapes resonate with her visual works, blending spoken word, chanting and natural sounds into immersive experiences that traverse cultural and temporal boundaries. In the context of this exhibition, Vicuña’s improvisatory performances transform poetry into a participatory act, echoing the fluid and non-linear structure of her quipus.

Vicuña’s precarious poetic practice is inseparable from her visual and sonic explorations. Her fragmented, metaphor-rich verses reflect themes of displacement, environmental destruction, and cultural survival. Her poetry, like her quipus, invites an active engagement, weaving a narrative that is as evocative as it is open-ended.

A new artists’ book titled Mapping the Silence by Vicuña and James O’Hern, co-published by IMMA and Distance No Object and edited by Luke Roberts and Amy Tobin. The book explores their connections to Ireland and includes photos of their visits to Irish archaeological sites and of Vicuña’s offerings to Queen Maeve’s Cairn in Co. Sligo – one of the largest unexcavated neolithic monuments in Europe. The poems reflect on Vicuña and O’Hern’s time in Ireland in the 2000s as well as a more recent site visit, during which Vicuña visited the National Museum of Ireland to view its collection of Sheela-na-Gigs: medieval carvings of naked females posed in a manner which display and emphasise the genitalia.

The exposed genitalia of Sheela‑na‑Gigs can be read as creative empowerment or birth symbolism; similarly to many indigenous Andean traditions which feature a strong emphasis on the female body as central to life, regeneration and agriculture. A series of new Sheela-na-Gig paintings included in the exhibition highlight Vicuña’s desire to explore the connections between ancient imagery in both South America and Ireland. An original Sheela-na-Gig carving, on loan from the National Museum of Ireland, is also on display.

Elsewhere in the exhibition a bronze and ruby sculpture by Leonora Carrington, Vulture (Dragon), 2010, held in IMMA’s Collection, demonstrates the influence of Carrington – her surrealist work as well as her interest in mythology, feminism and Mesoamerican traditions – during Vicuna’s early years as an artist she spent some time with Carrington. This influence is evident in paintings such as Obstructing the Doors is Dangerous (2023) and Medusa (1972/2023) – one of several paintings that Vicuña remade after the originals were lost in Chile due to the coup and her exile.

Through her innovative synthesis of visual art, sound, and poetry, Vicuña offers a deeply moving reflection on the interwoven histories of humanity and nature. Reverse Migration, a Poetic Journey challenges us to listen to silenced voices, honour ancient wisdom, and reimagine our relationship with the earth in a time of urgent transformation.

13 October 2025

ENDS

For media inquiries, please contact:  
Monica Cullinane E: [email protected] T: 086 2010023
Patrice Molloy E: [email protected] T: 086 2009957

Notes to Editors

Exhibition Details

Cecilia Vicuña: Reverse Migration, a Poetic Journey
7 November 2025 – 5 July 2026
Admission free
Webpage: Cecilia Vicuña – IMMA

Opening Hours
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 10am – 5.30pm
Wednesday: 11.30am – 5.30pm
Sunday: 12noon – 5.30pm
Bank Holiday Mondays: 12noon – 5.30pm

Exhibition Launch: Thursday 6 November from 6 – 8pm.
The opening night coincides with the launch of Dublin Gallery Weekend 6 — 9 November 2025 taking place at IMMA on the same evening in the Great Hall.

Preview Talk & Reading with Cecilia Vicuña & James O’Hern
Date & Venue: Thursday 6 November 2025, 5pm – 6.15pm, Chapel.   
Join Cecilia Vicuña for an evening of poetry, conversation, and reflection to mark the opening of her solo exhibition Reverse Migration, a Poetic Journey at IMMA. This event includes poetry readings and a discussion with Vicuña and James O’Hern, as well as a curatorial introduction by Mary Cremin, Head of Programming at IMMA. Booking is essential for this event – booking opens on Monday 13 October 2025. Click here to book.

About Cecilia Vicuña
Cecilia Vicuña is a poet, artist, activist and filmmaker whose work addresses pressing concerns of the modern world, including ecological destruction, human rights, and cultural homogenization. Born and raised in Santiago de Chile, she has been in exile since the early 1970s, after the military coup against the president Salvador Allende. In London, she was a co-founder of Artists for Democracy in l974.

She coined the term “Arte Precario” in the mid-1960s in Chile, as a new independent and non-colonized category for her precarious works composed of debris, structures that disappear in the landscape, which include her quipus (knot in Quechua), envisioned as poems in space. Vicuña has re-invented the ancient Pre-Columbian quipu system of non-writing with knots through ritual acts that weave the urban landscape, rivers and oceans, as well as people, to re-construct a sense of unity and awareness of interconnectivity. These works bridge art and poetry as a way of “hearing an ancient silence waiting to be heard.” Her poetry and Palabrarmas (word-weapons) stem from a deep enquiry into the roots of language. Her early work as a poet in the 60’s was simultaneously celebrated by avant-garde poetry magazines as El Corno Emplumado, Mexico City (l961–1968), and censored and/or suppressed for many decades in Chile and Latin America.

Solo exhibitions of Vicuña’s work have been organized at a number of major institutions, including, most recently, the Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile, Chile (2023); Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom (2022); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2022); Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia (MAMU), Bogotá, Colombia (2022); Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M), Madrid, Spain (2021); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA (2020); and Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Mexico (2020). Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including in documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017), and the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), and is part of major museum collections around the world.

The author of more than 30 volumes of art and poetry published in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, her most recent books are: PALABRARmas, USACH, Editorial de la Universidad de Santiago (2023); Word Weapons, Co-published by RITE Editions and Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2023);  Libro Venado, Direcciones, Buenos Aires (2022); Sudor de Futuro, Altazor, Chile (2021); Cruz del Sur, Lumen Chile (2020), Minga del Cielo Oscuro, CCE, Chile (2020), and New & Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña, edited and translated by Rosa Alcalá, Kelsey Street Press (2018), among many others.

Cecilia Vicuña was the winner of the 2023 Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas 2023, one of the most prestigious awards given by her homeland. Preceding this recognition, Vicuña was elected a foreign honorary member of the United States Academy of Arts and Letters and also received the Gold Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2022 at the 59th Venice Biennale. More details here

About James O’Hern 
James O’Hern is a Poet, researcher of prehistoric art and a producer of films relating to ancient cultures. He was born in Laredo, Texas, on April 17, 1933. He studied at Southern Methodist University, the University of California at Los Angeles, and New York University. O’Hern is the author of Honoring the Stones (Curbstone Press, 2004). He is also a filmmaker and has collaborated with the performance artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña on multiple projects. With Vicuña, he is the president and cofounder of Oysi, Inc. a non-profit corporation dedicated to preserving indigenous and oral cultures worldwide. He lives in New York City. More details here