‘When I was little, I understood that my thoughts were different, and I decided not to live colonized,’ the Chilean artist told Casa Vogue this year. Vicuña suffered as a result, for decades often at the brink of destitution but continuing nonetheless with her knotted textile sculptures, agitprop paintings and poetry. Now the world is eager to listen, what with the eco-feminist and Indigenous turn in artmaking that Vicuña’s work has always embodied. Dreaming Water, one of several recent retrospectives, which opened in Santiago and Buenos Aires last year, arrived at the Pinacoteca of São Paulo in May, while Pérez Art Museum Miami installed a nine-metre quipus, one of the artist’s cascading sculptures of unspun wool. Her work was present in 15 group shows this year, including Pacific Standard Time, California, and two biennials (Malta and Toronto). In addition, the artist presented spoken word performances at venues including Triple Canopy, New York; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; and Tate Britain, London. In November, Vicuña was awarded $100,000 as a recipient of the inaugural MoCA Los Angeles Eric and Wendy Schmidt Environment and Art Prize.