CECILIA VICUÑA’S TATE MODERN COMMISSION

Tate Modern and Hyundai Motor announced that Chilean artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña will create the next annual Hyundai Commission. Vicuña (b.1948) is perhaps best known for her radical textile sculptures, combining natural materials and traditional crafts. A prolific multi-disciplinary artist, Vicuña explores the pressing concerns of ecology, community, and social justice. Her new site-specific work for the Turbine Hall will inaugurate on October 11th  2022.

April 26, 2022
CECILIA VICUÑA’S TATE MODERN COMMISSION

Born and raised in Santiago, Vicuña went into exile during the early 1970s after the violent military coup against former Chilean President Salvador Allende. This sense of impermanence, and a desire to preserve and pay tribute to the country’s indigenous history and culture have characterised her career, spanning half a century. Vicuña’s ephemeral and environmentally conscious work combines the tactile ritual of weaving with assemblage, poetry, performance, and painting. Her creations include the ongoing series Precarios, tiny sculptures combining feathers, stone, plastic, wood, wire, shells, cloth and other human-made detritus, and Quipus, hanging textile installations which draw on an ancient Andean method of communication through knotting coloured strings.

Frances Morris, Director at Tate Modern said: “Cecilia Vicuña has been an inspirational figure for decades, with the relevance and urgency of her work rightly underscored by her Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement award. As a tireless champion of ecological awareness and social justice, as well as the creator of stunning and powerful works of art, I am delighted that Tate Modern will be working with Cecilia Vicuña on our next annual Hyundai Commission - I can’t wait for its unveiling this October.”

 

Since Tate Modern opened in 2000, the Turbine Hall has hosted some of the world’s most memorable and acclaimed works of contemporary art, reaching an audience of millions each year. The way artists have interpreted this vast industrial space has revolutionised public perceptions of contemporary art in the twenty-first century. The annual Hyundai Commission gives artists an opportunity to create new work for this unique context. Artists who have created works in response to the unique context of the Turbine Hall to date are Abraham Cruzvillegas, Philippe Parreno, SUPERFLEX, Tania Bruguera and Kara Walker.

 

Hyundai Commission Cecilia Vicuña will be curated by Catherine Wood, Senior Curator of International Art (Performance) at Tate with Fiontan Moran, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate.

eZ debug

Timing: Jan 29 2026 15:33:36
Script start
Timing: Jan 29 2026 15:33:36
Module start 'content'
Timing: Jan 29 2026 15:33:36
Module end 'content'
Notice: PHP: E_NOTICE Jan 29 2026 15:33:36
Array to string conversion in /var/www/sites/cms4/ez-2013.09/var/artealdia_com/cache/template/compiled/page_head-41456490553c6342610ca0a1b2d2cc7c.php on line 939
Timing: Jan 29 2026 15:33:36
Script end

Main resources:

Total runtime0.0901 sec
Peak memory usage4,352.0000 KB
Database Queries71

Timing points:

CheckpointStart (sec)Duration (sec)Memory at start (KB)Memory used (KB)
Script start 0.00000.0083 912.9922607.4688
Module start 'content' 0.00830.0115 1,520.4609626.6875
Module end 'content' 0.01990.0701 2,147.14841,716.1719
Script end 0.0900  3,863.3203 

Time accumulators:

 Accumulator Duration (sec) Duration (%) Count Average (sec)
Ini load
Load cache0.00232.5606150.0002
Mysql Total
Database connection0.00141.565810.0014
Mysqli_queries0.029132.3013710.0004
Looping result0.00070.7969710.0000
TS translator
TS init0.00141.570330.0005
TS cache load0.00111.191730.0004
TS context load0.00091.020830.0003
Template Total0.069477.010.0694
Template load0.00111.179510.0011
Template processing0.068375.816810.0683
Template load and register function0.00050.564910.0005
Override
Cache load0.00060.686920.0003
Sytem overhead
Fetch class attribute name0.00060.643710.0006
Fetch class attribute can translate value0.00000.027810.0000
class_abstraction
Instantiating content class attribute0.00000.012210.0000
XML
Image XML parsing0.00121.295110.0012
states
state_id_array0.00192.095250.0004
state_identifier_array0.00212.305850.0004
General
dbfile0.00556.0893220.0002
String conversion0.00000.010820.0000
Note: percentages do not add up to 100% because some accumulators overlap

Time used to render debug report: 0.0003 secs