Cecilia Vicuña: Minga for the Sea

“We all love the sea, and this love is at the heart of its defense.” —Cecilia Vicuña

Minga for the Sea is a major new commission by the internationally acclaimed Chilean artist, poet, and activist Cecilia Vicuña, developed specifically for Kunstnernes Hus. It is the artist’s first major presentation in Scandinavia and the Nordic region.

The exhibition brings together voices from Indigenous territories from the Global South and North, where communities stand at the forefront of the defense of marine and coastal environments against destructive resource extraction and pollution. Through these situated perspectives, the project foregrounds not only local struggles but also the deep—often obscured—relations between distant geographies shaped by similar landscapes, as well as intertwined histories of colonization and extractive economies.

At the core of the exhibition are two large horizontal quipus, one in each skylit hall at Kunstnernes Hus, constructed from locally sourced raw wool. In the Andes, native wool has been traditionally used to symbolize water as the union and interdependence of all ecosystems. The quipu (“knot” in Quechua) is an advanced pre-Columbian system of communication in which knowledge was encoded through knots tied along cords—a system deliberately targeted and largely destroyed by European colonizers, as quipus also recorded land rights and forms of governance.

By invoking this disrupted tradition, Vicuña reanimates the quipu as both an ancestral technology and a living, evolving form—one that also evokes planetary systems and the interdependence of all the Earth’s elements. Here, it is reimagined as a collective, transnational medium that connects struggles across geographies in a shared defense of the sea, the origin of all life.

Each quipu corresponds to a specific territory: one to the Southern Hemisphere/Chile, the other to the Northern Hemisphere/Sápmi. Embedded are “letters” contributed by Indigenous and environmental defenders—poems, drawings, crafted objects, found material, video, and more—forming a polyphonic archive of cultural resistance. In the quipu dedicated to the South, components were made by members of an alliance of Indigenous women working to protect coastal territories (Red de Mujeres Originarias por la Defensa del Mar) in Chile. For the quipu dedicated to Sápmi, Vicuña has invited activists opposing the dumping of copper mining waste in Riehpovuotna/Repparfjord—an ecologically vital fjord for wild salmon—to contribute their voices.

The two installations unfold differently in space, each evoking wave forms and sea foam. In one hall, the southern quipu is suspended from the ceiling; in the other, the northern quipu extends horizontally through the room, winding like a river or serpent—an expression of the profound interdependence between land, water, and life within Sámi cosmology. These spatial articulations reflect distinct relationships to landscape while revealing resonances between them: ocean currents, migratory routes, and ecological cycles that exceed national borders.

Though geographically distant, these regions share similar fjord landscapes and climatic conditions. They are also intimately entangled through global systems of extraction. Norwegian farmed salmon, for instance, are fed pellets partly composed of small fish caught off the Chilean coast, while Norwegian salmon companies have long operated in Chile. Materials, capital, and environmental consequences thus circulate between hemispheres, linking northern fjords with southern coastlines. The exhibition addresses landscapes as interconnected and subject to destruction through extraction, highlighting how Indigenous communities articulate alternative cosmologies grounded in reciprocity, stewardship, and relationality—frameworks in which humans are but one part of larger ecosystems.

The title’s Minga derives from Quechua, meaning collective labor undertaken for the common good. This principle underpins the exhibition’s methodology: a gathering of voices, gestures, and materials shaped through collaboration and solidarity across territories.

A key initial point of departure for the project is a Chilean law commonly referred to as the “Ley Lafkenche,” a landmark protection of Indigenous marine rights that is currently under threat. Across the exhibition, Indigenous cosmologies from south to north emerge not as discrete worldviews but as interconnected ways of knowing that challenge current paradigms and affirm the living bonds between sea, land, and community—reminding us that the Earth’s elements are not limitless, but finite and vulnerable to irreversible loss.

About the artist
Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948, Chile) has, over more than five decades, developed a practice that moves fluidly between poetry, visual art, film, and activism. Living in exile since the 1970s, she has consistently addressed the intersections of ecological destruction, cultural erasure, and civil rights. A pioneer of what she termed Arte Precario—ephemeral works created from fragile and found materials—Vicuña has exhibited internationally, including major solo presentations at the Guggenheim Museum and in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Her retrospective Soñar el agua was recently on view at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago de Chile, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, and the Pinacoteca, São Paulo. She was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2022 and Chile’s National Prize for Visual Arts in 2023. In 2024, she was awarded the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles’ inaugural Art and Environment Prize.

With Minga for the Sea, Vicuña invites us to attend lovingly, to listen, and to learn—from the sea, from one another, and from the ancestral knowledges that persist against erasure.

Summer 2026 at Kunstnernes Hus
In parallel to Vicuña’s exhibition, there will be a presentation by artist Amber Ablett entitled The Fallow Year in the Room for Rest at Kunstnernes Hus. The summer program will also feature the MFA graduation show of the Art Academy of Oslo’s National Academy of the Arts.

Credits and support
Minga for the Sea is curated by Sarah Lookofsky, Director of Kunstnernes Hus. The exhibition is a collaboration with Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, initiated and produced by Kunstnernes Hus. Following its presentation at Kunstnernes Hus, Minga for the Sea will travel to the North Norwegian Art Museum’s Bodø branch in 2027.

The exhibition is kindly supported by the Savings Bank Foundation DNB, the Nordic Culture Fund and Hillesvåg Ullvarefabrikk. Kunstnernes Hus and Cecilia Vicuña also extend gratitude to Jannik Abel for finding and lending materials to the exhibition.