words are the inner star. - Cecilia Vicuña

Even in the ’60s, the ecological disasters had begun, and I think by focusing on dissolution and regeneration of the lifeforce, I was instinctively responding to that pain, the pain of the ocean, the pain of the sand. I walked on this beach as a kid and the sole of my feet would get black from oil, everything was already blackened. That was 50 years ago. We have lived with this denial and destruction for 50 years, and when you think of the damage that those 50 years have done, if there’s a future for humanity, those 50 years are going to be known as one of the most criminal.

If you think about human beings, [laughter] people have been people for almost a million years, and what we understand as art and art history is only a fleeting moment in that story.

Our understanding of time is so limited. We have very basic markers of time. We live and we die, but what else? In my opinion, a poem is created outside of time entirely. A quipu, on the other hand, is like traveling through time. We all experience this ability to travel back and forth in time in our souls, in our imaginations, and in our hearts. Mathematicians and physicists attempt to create these fantastic theories and equations, but I have been making art about this all along. I think that poetry has given me this gift of knowing. Not every poet has this. I think it is reserved to certain cultures, perhaps. One must open themselves to these other forms of knowing, but Western cultures have suppressed this. I call it a colonization of the mind.