Two vast fabric hangings trail their hems along the floor at opposite ends of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Each is created from cascading lengths of fragile cotton and gauze, unspun wool, knotted rope, tattered net and linen – all of it white. Swaying slightly in the shifting air, they look like the ghostly remnants of some once-great culture.
Which is exactly what they are, in a sense: modern versions of ancient quipu, an Andean method of recording everything from memories to messages to cosmological charts using structures of strands, knots and textiles. The Chilean artist, poet and activist Cecilia Vicuña (b.1948) is best known for these recreations of quipu. Usually they are smaller and worked in brilliant colours, but here she is commemorating the violent destruction of whole territories belonging to Indigenous people from Brazil to Colombia to Chile. The hangings rise to the full height of the hall, a towering 27 metres, in all their spectral pallor.
