Cecilia Vicuña is a Chilean-born, New York–based and Mapuche-identified artist who has published more than twenty books of poetry. She is a proponent of ethnopoetics, a commanding performer and the editor of the famed trilingual anthology Ül: Four Mapuche Poets. Vicuña’s work blends political activism with experimental aesthetic practice. Exiled from Chile after the 1973 coup against Salvador Allende, she has since visited her homeland, although she resides in New York. She creates poetry, performances and sculptures that rely on those aspects of language, action and objects that, as she notes, are “twice precarious, they come from prayer and predict their own destruction.” 

In addition to Vicuña’s oral poetics performance, the event will include A Show of Hands, a multimedia presentation by USC writing instructor Mark Marino about a Mexican American family caught up in the May 1 immigration-reform marches. USC academic counselor and author Roberto Leni will open the show with a reading on exile and cultural memory. The event will also feature photographs by Venezuelan-born Gabriel Fumero and will be introduced by professor Macarena Gómez-Barris.  

Organized by Macarena Gómez-Barris (Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity) and Roberto Leni.

For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu