MOCA Celebrates the Opening of Cecilia Vicuña’s “About to Happen” & Alice Rahon’s “Poetic Invocations” During Miami Art Week 2019

Photography by Steve Blaine on December 5th, 2019 in Art Basel Miami Beach 2019, Arts, Culture, Lifestyle

North Miami, FL – December 5, 2019 – The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MOCA) celebrated its two exhibitions that contribute to the scholarship and recognition of Hispanic women artists ― Cecilia Vicuña’s “About to Happen” and the late French-Mexican Surrealist Alice Rahon’s “Poetic Invocations” during Miami Art Week 2019. MOCA was packed with art enthusiasts who browsed the exhibition while enjoying live music. Guests had the opportunity to meet and greet with artist Cecilia Vicuña and co-curators Andrea Andersson and Julia Bryan-Wilson, along with “Alice Rahon: Poetic Invocations” curator Teresa Arcq.

The first major U.S. solo exhibition of influential Chilean-born artist Cecilia Vicuña, “About to Happen” traces Vicuña’s career-long commitment to exploring displaced materials, peoples, and landscapes in a time of climate change. It is comprised of Vicuña’s multidisciplinary work in performance, sculpture, drawing, video, text, and site-specific installations created over 40 years. For the first time in this traveling exhibition, the show will include painting, a practice Vicuña began during the 1970s and to which she has recently returned, in some cases repainting lost works from memory. The exhibition is co-curated by Andrea Andersson, The Helis Foundation Chief Curator of Visual Arts at the CAC, and Julia Bryan-Wilson, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley. “Poetic Invocations” marks the first solo show dedicated to Alice Rahon’s work in the U.S. in 55 years. Born in France and later nationalized as a Mexican, Rahon became an active member of a group of European Surrealist artists in exile. This exhibition examines a robust 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 that emphasizes 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 has independently produced many high-profile exhibitions. Cecilia Vicuña’s “About to Happen” and Alice Rahon’s “Poetic Invocations,” accompanied by public programming, will be on view at MOCA through Sunday, March 29, 2020.