Knotless: Cecilia Vicuña's Vanished Glacier

For thousands of years, Andean communities tied knowledge into cord: harvests, histories, the movements of stars, all recorded in knotted fibre rather than written script. Cecilia Vicuña has spent decades reviving the ancient system of quipu communication as living art, and her latest work, unveiled this spring at Castello di Rivoli, strips the knots away entirely.

El glaciar ido (The vanished glacier) is Vicuña's first solo exhibition in an Italian museum, and her first major new commission for the Manica Lunga, the castle's long, sloping gallery. True to her practice, she works with raw, unprocessed wool, unwound and assembled into what she calls a quipu acostado, a horizontal quipu suspended along a gradual incline through the building. Seen from below, it is a sculptural system in motion, tracing the shape of something receding. That something, is ice.

Cecilia Vicuña working in the Manica Lunga, Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea. Photo: Alberto Nidola.

The Susa Valley, where the Castello stands, once sat beneath glaciers that have long since retreated. Vicuña's cords become a stand-in for that vanished water, an aerial architecture built from absence as much as material. Curator Marcella Beccaria points out that Vicuña's knots are missing on purpose, gesturing towards a slow erosion of memory and care for the world around us. The reference reaches further still, towards Chile's desaparecidos and the many people silenced by repressive regimes across the twentieth century, the fibre becoming a way of holding what history tries to erase...

(...)

Want to read more of this article?
We are proud to be a subscriber-funded publication with members in 185 countries. We know our readership is passionate about textiles, so we invite you to help us preserve and promote the stories, memories, and histories that fabric holds. Your support allows us to publish our magazine, and also ‘what's on’ information, and subscription interviews, reviews, and long-read articles in our online blog. 

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? CLICK HERE TO ACCESS CONTENT

Or, to continue reading….


Magazine subscribers automatically get free access to all our online content. We send the access code by email with the publication of each issue. You will also find it on the envelope containing your magazine. Please note the access code changes every issue. 

. . .

Image Credits:

Lead: Cecilia Vicuña, El glaciar ido (The vanished glacier / Il ghiacciaio scomparso), 2026. Installation view, Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Torino. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

All further images as credited in captions.