Hyundai Motor Company and Tate Modern today announced that Chilean artist and poet Cecilia Vicuna will create the next Hyundai Commission for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

Hyundai Commission, a key part of the unique partnership between Hyundai Motor and Tate, to unveil a new site-specific work by Cecilia Vicuna in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall this October

Vicuna, known for the way she explores pressing concerns about ecology, community and social justice, to create the next Hyundai Commission

Hyundai Commission: Cecilia Vicuna will open to the public from October 13, 2022 to April 16, 2023.

The annual Hyundai Commission offers artists an opportunity to create new work for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, a space that has hosted some of the world's most memorable and acclaimed works of contemporary art. This year's Hyundai Commission by Cecilia Vicuna will be the seventh in this series of extraordinary works.

Cecilia Vicuna, Installation view of UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, July 11-October 14, 2018. Photo by Johnna Arnold. Courtesy Cecilia Vicuna; BAMPFA; and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London

Cecilia Vicuna (b.1948) is perhaps best known for her radical textile sculptures, combining natural materials and traditional crafts. A prolific multi-disciplinary artist, Vicuna explores the pressing concerns of ecology, community, and social justice. Born and raised in Santiago, Vicuna went into exile during the early 1970s after the violent military coup against former Chilean President Salvador Allende. This sense of impermanence, and a desire to preserve and pay tribute to the country's indigenous history and culture have characterized her career, spanning half a century.

Vicuna's ephemeral and environmentally conscious work combines the tactile ritual of weaving with assemblage, poetry, performance, and painting. Her creations include the ongoing series Precarios, tiny sculptures combining feathers, stone, plastic, wood, wire, shells, cloth and other human-made detritus, and Quipus, hanging textile installations which draw on an ancient Andean method of communication through knotting-colored strings.

Cecilia Vicuna's work explores generations of memory and history from a wider perspective, attending to the world around us. We look forward to seeing how the seventh Hyundai Commission with Vicuna invites audiences to think about their role in a broader conversation about our present and future.

Thomas Schemera

Global Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Customer Experience Division of Hyundai Motor Company

Cecilia Vicuna Quipu Womb 2017 Cecilia Vicuna. Photo: Joe Humphrys

Cecilia Vicuna has been an inspirational figure for decades, with the relevance and urgency of her work rightly underscored by her forthcoming Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement award at the Venice Biennale 2022. As a tireless champion of ecological awareness and social justice, as well as the creator of stunning and powerful works of art, I am delighted that Tate Modern will be working with Cecilia Vicuna on our next annual Hyundai Commission - I can't wait for its unveiling this October.

Frances Morris

Director of Tate Modern

The Hyundai Commissions made possible by the long-term partnership between Hyundai Motor and Tate are confirmed through 2026 as part of the longest initial commitment from a corporate partner in Tate's history. In addition to the Hyundai Commission, Hyundai Motor supports the Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational. Launched in January 2019, the center is transforming how Tate shares new perspectives on global art histories with individuals and organizations around the world.

Hyundai Motor's commitment to supporting art and its global communities has led to long-term partnerships with museums and organizations. The aim is to encourage new ways of thinking about art and the values and connections it can create by supporting initiatives where artists, communities, and institutions come together to offer transformative experiences. Hyundai Motor has supported art initiatives through long-term partnerships with global museums, such as Tate, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) since 2013.

Hyundai Commission:Cecilia Vicuna will be curated by Catherine Wood, Senior Curator of International Art (Performance), Tate with Fiontan Moran, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate. It will be accompanied by a new book from Tate Publishing.

About Cecilia Vicuna

Vicuna's art has been acquired and exhibited at museums and galleries around the world, including retrospectives at Ex Witte de With/ Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo (MUAC) in Mexico City and CA2M, Madrid, as well as exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago; and the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. Vicuna received her M.F.A. from the National School of Fine Arts, University of Chile in 1971 and went on to study at Slade School of Fine Art, University College London from 1972-3. She has received several awards, including the Premio Velazquez de Artes Plasticas, Madrid, Spain (2019); Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, Santa Monica, CA (2019); Anonymous Was a Woman Award, New York, NY (1999); and The Andy Warhol Foundation Award, New York, NY (1997), and in 2015 was appointed the Messenger Lecturer at Cornell University. Vicuna is the author of 27 internationally published volumes of poetry and was a founding member of Artists for Democracy. She divides her time between Chile and New York.

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