Living Threads at Whitechapel Gallery is the first major UK exhibition of eco-feminist activist contemporary artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña.

Born on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, in 1948, Vicuña moved to London to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1972. While she was in London, Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, was violently deposed during the 1973 Chilean military coup. This left Vicuña unable to return home because of the threat of violence or death.

When her UK visa expired in 1975, she went to Bogotá, Colombia, then moved to New York in 1980 where she has remained to the present. It was not until recently that Vicuña’s outstanding contributions have been commercially recognised. She received the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement award at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 and won the Icon Artist Gold Medal at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2025.

Her new solo exhibition Living Threads contributes to the long-overdue recognition this engaging and important artist deserves.

A gentle dance with living threads

The “living threads” of the exhibition title tell of Vicuña’s ideas around the vitality and effervescence within fibre-based art practice, as well as the invisible connections and interactions between people and plants, animals and the natural world. These ideas have occupied Vicuña’s creativity since her teenage years and are magnificently displayed at........

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