Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen - Artist Book on Environmental Art - Paperback

Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen - Artist Book

A new edition of artist-poet Cecilia Vicuña's artist's book on the politics of the sea

Beginning and ending at the edge of the ocean at the sacred mouth of the Aconcagua River, About to Happen serves as a lament as well as love letter to the sea. In this artist's book, Chilean-born artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña weaves personal and ancestral memory while summoning the collective power to confront the economic disparities and environmental crises of the 21st century.

Precarios and Basuritas: Assemblage Art from Ocean Detritus

Collecting the detritus that washes up on shore, Vicuña assembles out of the refuse tiny precarios and basuritas--little sculptures held together with nothing more than string and wire, which she sometimes makes as offerings to be reclaimed by the sea. These ephemeral assemblages transform discarded materials into powerful statements about environmental degradation and renewal.

Decades-Long Practice at the Intersection of Art Forms

About to Happen traces a decades-long practice that has refused categorical distinctions and thrived within the confluences of conceptual art, land art, feminist art, performance and poetry. Vicuña's nuanced visual poetics--operating fluidly between concept and craft, text and textile--transforms the discarded into the elemental, paying acute attention to the displaced, the marginalized and the forgotten.

Visual Poetry and Environmental Activism

This artist's book documents Vicuña's unique approach to addressing 21st-century environmental crises through art. Her work combines personal narrative with broader ecological concerns, creating a meditation on humanity's relationship with the ocean. The book serves as both documentation of her sculptural practice and a standalone work of visual poetry.

Published by Siglio Press

This edition continues Siglio Press's commitment to publishing innovative artist's books that blur boundaries between visual art and literature. The book preserves Vicuña's interdisciplinary approach, presenting her work in a format that honors both its conceptual depth and material presence.