Cecilia Vicuña is a Chilean-born poet and artist known for works that address colonialism, the body, and human rights. In her painting Karl Marx (1972), Vicuña situates the coauthor of the Communist Manifesto amidst blossoming trees and a couple in love, compressing history and personal life. Her ongoing series of small sculptures precarios, are reminiscent of the work Joseph Beuys. These spatial poems are comprised of feathers, plastic, wood, wire, and other detritus.“The notion that art and poetry are two completely separate fields is an exclusively academic idea. It’s not at all how an artist or a poet perceives it,” she’s said. “For me, both are deeply intertwined. I consider myself a poet because I think in terms of poetry, but that doesn’t mean my thoughts are going to manifest in a written form.” Born on July 22, 1948 in Santiago, Chile, she studied English while creating large abstract paintings at her family’s home. In 1966, Vicuña began her studies in architecture before deciding to major in fine art. She received her MFA in 1971, and soon after moved to London, attending the Slade School of Fine Art. The artist decided to stay in the United Kingdom during the ongoing coup of General Augusto Pinochet in her home country. Vicuña currently lives and works between New York, NY and Santiago, Chile. Today, her works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate in London, the Reina Sofia in Madrid, and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago, among others.