“Poetic Invocations” and “About to Happen” at MOCA Recognizes Under-explored Women Artists for Miami Art Week

Contributed by MOCA

The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MOCA) is proud to host two exhibitions showcasing women artists ― late artist Alice Rahon’s “Poetic Invocations,” and artist Cecilia Vicuña’s “Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen” ― during Miami Art Week in December.

“Poetic Invocations” marks the first solo show dedicated to Rahon’s work in the U.S. in 55 years. The exhibition aims to contribute to the scholarship and recognition of under-explored women artists, and to the intercultural influences on European artists in exile in the Americas, whose work was often deeply marked by indigenous and archaic cultures. Born in France and later nationalized as a Mexican, w joined the Parisian Surrealist circle as a poet, but once in Mexico, she turned her creativity mainly to painting. She became an active a member of a group of European Surrealists artists in exile including Remedios Varo, Benjamin Péret, Leonora Carrington, and Kati Horna. This exhibition examines a robust art-historical moment that emerged in 1940 as an international community of artists fled World War II in Europe and settled in Mexico. It will feature approximately 30 works including paintings, works on paper, as well as archival material to put an emphasis on Rahon´s oeuvre as a whole.

The exhibition is guest curated by Mexico-City based art historian Tere Arcq. Arcq has worked as chief curator at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, and as an independent curator has produced many high-profile exhibitions.

The first major U.S. solo exhibition of influential Chilean-born artist Cecilia Vicuña: “Cecilia Vicuña: About to Happen” traces Vicuña’s career-long commitment to exploring discarded and displaced materials, peoples, and landscapes in a time of global climate change. It is comprised of Vicuña’s multidisciplinary work in performance, sculpture, drawing, video, text, and site-specific installations created over 40 years. Vicuña’s work reflects the overlapping dialogs of conceptual art, land art, poetry, and feminist art practices. For the first time in this traveling exhibition, the show will include painting, a practice which Vicuña began during the late 1960s and to which she has recently returned ― in some cases, repainting lost paintings from memory.

The exhibition will include an expansive presentation of Vicuña’s precario sculptures, which the artist began creating in 1966. Vicuña assembles these “precarious works” from bits of wood, thread, and other found objects into temporary small sculptures that despite their modest scale have a surprising dynamism and energy. The exhibition also features the installation “Burnt Quipu” (2018), in which lengths of dyed wool hang floor to ceiling, connecting earth and sky, (in mourning for the forest fires around the world. “Burnt Quipu” is part of Vicuña’s longstanding artistic exploration of the ancient Andean writing tradition of record keeping with knots, an advanced communication system dismantled by the European Colonizers.

Both exhibitions will open on Tuesday, Nov. 26; remain on view during Miami Art Week, and run through Sunday, March 29, 2020. MOCA will host a Miami Art Week reception on Thursday, Dec. 5; VIP reception (invitation only) from 6–8 p.m., open to the public from 8–11 p.m. General admission is $20; it is free for MOCA members and North Miami residents.

About Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), North Miami is dedicated to making contemporary art accessible to diverse audiences through the collection, preservation and exhibition of the best of contemporary art and its art historical influences. MOCA began operating in 1981, opened a new building in 1996 designed by Charles Gwathmey of GSNY,  and was the first collecting institution in Miami.

MOCA is an inclusive cultural hub, embracing the diversity that defines its dynamic community, and organizing exhibitions that propel art and ideas connected to its South Florida home into the global cultural conversation. The museum is located at 770 NE 125th Street, North Miami, FL 33161. It is open Tuesday–Friday from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. and Saturday – Sunday 10.a.m.–5 p.m. (closed Mondays and major holidays). Admission to the museum is $10 and free to MOCA members and North Miami residents. For more information, visit mocanomi.org, call 305-893-6211 or email info@mocanomi.org.

Miami Art Week Extended Hours

Sunday, Dec. 1 – Monday, Dec. 9, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.