
Artist Cecilia Vicuña’s Sonoran Quipu reassembles the desert
High Country News, March 29, 2023
“Sonoran Quipu is the latest in Vicuña’s decades-long exploration of the quipu as a form, dating back to the blue thread in her bedroom. In Quechua, the language of many of the ethnic groups Indigenous to Andean South America — the area that stretches from what is now southern Colombia to Chile and northern Argentina, encompassing much of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador — the word “quipu” means ‘knot’ or ‘to knot.’ It also refers to an ancient record-keeping device: Instead of using written ledgers, Andean societies made knots on fiber cords to keep track of numeric information, such as tax, census, or calendar records. Such quipus can include just a few strands, or thousands; they can be color-coded, or not.
One of the pieces in the Sonoran Quipu fashions a traditional quipu form out of Sonoran materials, threading chile seed pods on strings of different lengths and hanging them from a long smooth tree branch. But the rest look nothing like historical quipus. In Vicuña’s interpretation, the quipu encompasses far more than its utilitarian function. Beyond numerical values, a quipu can hold ‘the watercourses of the Andes, or the connections between land and sky,’ said curator Laura Copelin.”
High Country News, March 29, 2023
“Sonoran Quipu is the latest in Vicuña’s decades-long exploration of the quipu as a form, dating back to the blue thread in her bedroom. In Quechua, the language of many of the ethnic groups Indigenous to Andean South America — the area that stretches from what is now southern Colombia to Chile and northern Argentina, encompassing much of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador — the word “quipu” means ‘knot’ or ‘to knot.’ It also refers to an ancient record-keeping device: Instead of using written ledgers, Andean societies made knots on fiber cords to keep track of numeric information, such as tax, census, or calendar records. Such quipus can include just a few strands, or thousands; they can be color-coded, or not.
One of the pieces in the Sonoran Quipu fashions a traditional quipu form out of Sonoran materials, threading chile seed pods on strings of different lengths and hanging them from a long smooth tree branch. But the rest look nothing like historical quipus. In Vicuña’s interpretation, the quipu encompasses far more than its utilitarian function. Beyond numerical values, a quipu can hold ‘the watercourses of the Andes, or the connections between land and sky,’ said curator Laura Copelin.”