Tate Modern, London
The Chilean artist and poet has hung up huge mobiles of fraying wool, knotted rope and debris mudlarked from the Thames, as an elegy to lost language and wilful destruction
The most affecting and mysterious Turbine Hall commission at Tate Modern in a long time, Cecilia Vicuña’s Brain Forest Quipu is a moving lament to a disappearing world, the loss of an ancient language and to the destruction of communities, their ways of life and cultures.
Two large sculptures hang from the roof, falling the entire height of the space, one to the foot of the angled ramp, the other on the far side of the bridge that bisects the space. Pale agglomerations of fraying raw wool, knotted rope and twine, delicate woven netting and suspended braided material sag and fall, sweeping the floor and swaying in the air currents. There are rope-ladders strung with bleached driftwood and bones, tangles and loose coils ravelling and unravelling on the concrete beneath our feet, knitted mesh above our heads and grouped balls of rope dangling in mid-air.
Cecilia Vicuña: Brain Forest Quipu is at Tate Modern, London, from 11 October to 16 April
