Exhibition by Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña at the Tate Modern

Tate Modern has unveiled two monumental new sculptures created by Chilean artist poet Cecilia Vicuña.

Woven together from an array of different materials, they hang 27 metres from the ceiling and are positioned at opposite ends of the Turbine Hall.

These sculptures are combined with audio and digital installations to form Vicuña’s most ambitious work to date.

Brain Forest Quipu is the seventh annual Hyundai Commission for the Turbine Hall.

The installation brings together different strands of Cecilia Vicuña’s practice, her use of found materials to create delicate sculptural forms, her sound work, her activism for indigenous peoples and environmental causes, and her pioneering work with the Andean tradition of the quipu.

Describing this tradition, Vicuña said: “In the Andes people did not write, they wove meaning into textiles and knotted cords. Five thousand years ago they created the quipu, a poem in space, a way to remember, involving the body and the cosmos at once. A tactile, spatial metaphor for the union of all.”

The multi-part installation is an act of mourning for the destruction of forests, the subsequent impact on climate change, and the violence against indigenous people.

The pale, bone-white quipu sculptures in the Turbine Hall contain a complex variety of materials, including unspun wool, plant fibres, rope and cardboard.

These are interspersed with found objects like small clay pipes and pottery fragments, which were collected from the banks of the Thames by women from local Latin American communities.

A soundscape called Sound Quipu is played from speakers within each sculpture.

Vicuña worked with composer Ricardo Gallo on the collection of compositions, which are woven together from new improvised recordings by Vicuña, Gallo and other artists, traditional Indigenous music, field recordings of nature, and periods of contemplative silence.

Pictured: Brain Forest Quipu exhibition / Picture: Sonal Bakrania