Recreating the art I lost after Chile’s coup

Chilean artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña was 24 when she arrived in London on a scholarship in 1972, planning to stay for little more than a year. But while she was studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, a military coup overthrew President Salvador Allende back home in Chile and made it impossible for her to return.

As political violence spread under Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, Cecilia became exiled. Separated from her family and much of her work, Cecilia eventually lost dozens of paintings she had left behind in Santiago. Decades later, after building an international career as an artist, poet and activist, she began recreating some of those lost works, including her striking 1971 self-portrait La Comegente or The People Eater.

Presenter: Mobeen Azhar
Producer: Hannah Dean

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(Photo: Close-up photo of Cecilia Vicuña during her public artwork Palabrarmas in Bogotá in 1977. Cecilia has long dark hair, and is wearing a handmade paper headpiece decorated with drawings of two outstreched hands outlined in red. At the centre is a pale yellow circular shape with the word SOL in blue. The image is taken indoors against a softly blurred, pale background.
Credit: Cecilia Vicuña/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London)