Agnes Denes, Monika Grzymala, Cecilia Vicuna. Les Immémoriales

Nourished by the living memory of Andean, Native American, and Australian Aboriginal people, Agnes Denes, Monika Grzymala and Cecilia Vicuña, three artists of different generations and horizons, invite you on a sensuous and poetic journey into the heart of political issues affecting our first-world societies.

In 1968, Agnes Denes (b. 1931, Hungary) made her first "eco-logical" intervention in the state of New York, announcing her commitment to environmental questions and human issues. In 1977, near the Niagara Falls, she re-enacted the ritual Rice/Tree/Burial—an "allegory of the life cycle" which associates the planting of a rice paddy; chaining together of trees in a sacred forest, formerly an Indian burial ground; filming from the edge of the Niagara Falls; and burying a time capsule addressed to "Homo Futurus" of the year 2979.

Since the 1960s, the poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948, Chile) has been creating installations that summon the spirits of the first inhabitants of the Andes. She literally and figuratively weaves together the past and the present. Her Quipus are inspired by a form of "writing" used by Indian tribes, made up of knotted cords, which was banned by the Spanish conquerors. The long, colored cotton cords which make up the immersive installation Quipu Austral (2012–13) are a shimmering, tactile ode to the communion between man and the cosmos.

Monika Grzymala's (b. 1970, Poland) ephemeral architectural interventions are engendered by physical and imagined lines, made from everyday, fragile materials, such as handmade paper, scotch tape, and magnetic tape). The artist created The River in 2012 in collaboration with Euraba Papermakers, an art collective of Australian Aboriginal women who use offcuts from the clothing industry established on their ancestral grounds. Water, indispensable in the manufacture of paper, is at the heart of the Goomeroi culture. The River floods the space of the exhibition with thousands of suspended white paper leaves—a river of tears evoking lost spirits.

Following the stream of water in order to grasp the thread of life, this exhibition renews the vital connection between the human and the Earth.

Agnes Denes, Monika Grzymala, Cecilia Vicuna
Les Immémoriales