Digital pigment print with enamel and gloss silkscreen detail on Hahnemuhle Museum Etching 350gsm
Size: 47 x 33.5 cm
Edition of 40, signed and numbered
About the work
Cecilia Vicuña has created Arbol de significados, (porotos Paracas), Tree of Meanings, (Beans as writing, Paracas), 2026, for Whitechapel Gallery, on the occasion of her exhibition ‘Cecilia Vicuña: Living Threads’ 7 October 2026 – 14 February 2027.
Vicuña’s edition, created as a digital pigment print with silkscreen enamel and gloss-glazed detail, takes as it’s starting point from her 2024 painting of the same name. Within the image, a tree takes centre stage, with beans sprouting from the tips of the branches.
The artist often writes "explanations" for her paintings. In this case:
“Perhaps to counter the idea of a ‘Tree of knowledge’, I imagine a ‘Tree of meanings’, a tree of painted beans, as a knowledge based on the language of earth. Beans speaking to us. When you look up ‘bean writing’ in ancient Peru, you find beans dressed as warriors, painted in Moche ceramics, a thousand years ago. Other studies consider painted beans ‘a matter that has raised sufficient uncertainties among scholars.’
But in my painted universe, the beans say:
‘We are the triumph of the Peruvian people.’
‘Peru is not to be plundered, but to be loved.’
‘Lima beans are the flaming spirit of Peru.’
‘Bean geometry says we cannot be defeated’
‘Bean people know how to persist.’
‘Bean people will never be defeated.’
‘We are an invincible bean person with our ponchito.’
‘We are the triumph of the Peruvian people.’
‘Peru is not to be plundered, but to be loved.’
‘Lima beans are the flaming spirit of Peru.’
‘Bean geometry says we cannot be defeated’
‘Bean people know how to persist.’
‘Bean people will never be defeated.’
‘We are an invincible bean person with our ponchito.’ “
About the artist
Cecilia Vicuña (b.1948, Santiago, Chile) is one of Latin America’s most internationally renowned artists, poets, and feminist activists. Vicuña’s interdisciplinary practice intentionally dissolves the boundaries between visual art, poetry, performance, ritual and activism. Born and raised in Santiago, Vicuña came to London to study at Slade School of Art in the early 1970s, and self-exiled after the violent military coup against President Salvador Allende in 1973.
As a creative and personal response to the situation in Chile, Vicuña’s practice became more explicitly political during the Allende period (1970-73), a process that intensified in London reflecting her experience of displacement, loss, political violence and instability. Another key facet of Vicuña’s work, evident from the 1960s onwards, is her deep commitment to honouring and preserving ecosystems and indigenous systems of knowledge. Many of her installations function as acts of remembrance for cultures, languages and ways of being that have been suppressed by dominant Western models and colonial systems.
Selected Exhibitions
Cecilia Vicuña’s work has been shown as part of a number of solo exhibitions at major institutions, including 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).
Whitechapel Gallery editions are generously donated by the artists. All proceeds from the sale of these works directly support our exhibition and education programmes.
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£550.00
(Members £495.00)
