Aguas y ríos: Activismo, descolonización y naturaleza en cecilia vicuña y ana tijoux

Two recent productions of Vicuña and Tijoux are analyzed in this article: the Quipu Mapocho installation (2017) and the song “Río abajo” (2014), respectively. The junctions of art and activism are examined through these works, particularly how both artists create rhetorics of resistance that render porous the boundaries between art and politics and also introduce critical positions against the modern-colonial-patriarchal-capitalist rationality that still governs Latin American societies. From this standpoint, I propose that Vicuña and Tijoux promote the decolonization of nature based on the decolonization of knowledge, articulating an ecological discourse in which rivers and seas are defended from the perspective of an indigenous “water culture” but without lapsing into purist or archaic visions.