On the occasion of Sandra Vásquez de la Horra’s retrospective exhibition “Soy Energía” at Haus der Kunst Munich, the artist meets her long-time companion Cecilia Vicuña. It is a meeting of two influential international voices with Chilean roots in contemporary art. The conversation brings together two artists who share a long-standing friendship and whose works forcefully address themes such as exile, memory, spirituality, indigenous cosmologies, the body and resistance.

What connects Vicuña and Vásquez de la Horra is a practice that interweaves poetry, ritual and political urgency, shaped by experiences of dictatorship, migration and the commitment to human and women’s rights. The public conversation, moderated by Jana Baumann, curator of the exhibition, marks a historic moment, a rare encounter between two artistic positions that have resonated strongly for decades.

The conversation also precedes the forthcoming publication Salta art Encounters, an ongoing Salta art series documenting dialogues between artists from South America and Europe-based curators. One of the upcoming volumes will feature a dialogue between Sandra Vásquez de la Horra and curator Jana Baumann.

In collaboration with Haus der Kunst.

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Sandra Vásquez de la Horra was born in Viña del Mar, Chile, in 1967. Since 2010, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra has been living and working in Berlin, expanding her oeuvre to include large-format drawings, leporellos and expansive installations that explore the connection between humans and nature. In recent years, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra has received several awards, including the Hans Theo Richter Prize (2021) and the Käthe Kollwitz Prize (2023). In 2022, she participated in the Venice Biennale, and, in 2024, the Denver Art Museum presented a retrospective exhibition. “Sandra Vásquez de la Horra. Soy Energía” at Haus der Kunst in Munich is the first comprehensive exhibition of her work in Europe.

Cecilia Vicuña (born 1948 in Santiago de Chile; lives and works in New York, NY, and Santiago de Chile) combines poetry, performance, conceptual art, and textile techniques in her artistic practice as a response to pressing contemporary issues, including ecological destruction, human rights, and cultural homogenisation. Her work has been presented internationally at major institutions such as the Tate Modern and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and has been featured in numerous international exhibitions. Vicuña has received several awards, including the Gold Medal ‘Icon Artist’ at the Art Basel Awards (2025); the Roswitha Haftmann Prize, Zurich (2025); and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2022).

Jana Baumann is a curator, editor, and author. She organizes exhibitions dedicated to transdisciplinary artistic practice, contributing to research on physically experiential and gender-critical art historiography. She has been senior curator at Haus der Kunst München since 2017, curating major retrospectives such as “Sandra Vásquez de la Horra. Soy Energía” (2025), “Rebecca Horn” (2024), “Heidi Bucher. Metamorphoses” (2021), “Franz Erhard Walther. Shifting Perspectives” (2020) and “Miriam Cahn. I as Human” (2019). Baumann is also responsible for a series of new productions by emerging international artists addressing contemporary transnational and ecological challenges.