‘Like an insect living in the pages of a book, even murdered revolutions live on, there to be found in the most precious, fragile forms, in their original germ, awaiting revival to flourish once again. Saborami, expanded and reconsidered half a century later, keeps alive the dream that someday we will be us.’

– Henry Broome, BOMB Magazine (Saborami is the editors’ choice in the Spring issue – read review here.)

Cecilia Vicuña created Saborami in the aftermath of the September 1973 military coup in Chile. Combining poetry, journal entries, documentation of artworks including assemblages and paintings, the book was published in Devon, England in an edition of 250 hand-made copies by the artist-led Beau Geste Press. It was one of the first artistic responses to the violence of the fascist junta, and also stands as a record of Vicuña’s early work. Decades ahead of its time, it offers us a warm, embodied vision of a socialist, ecofeminist and indigenous politics.

In recent years, Vicuña has gained increasing renown, winning the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Bienniale in 2022, and with installations at the Guggenheim (2022); and Tate Modern (2023). Saborami is one of her most important works, made at a turning point in her life and career, and reverberating through to the present day. Though the book is highly regarded, it has also been hard to access. This new, expanded facsimile edition remedies this oversight, and restates Saborami as a central example of artistic engagement in material and revolutionary resistance.

Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s original publication and of the coup in Chile, this expanded edition contains a new introduction by art historian and curator Amy Tobin and poet and writer Luke Roberts. It includes rarely seen archival material from Vicuña’s time in London, such as contributions to the feminist newspaper Spare Rib, commentary from BBC coverage, and her role in Artists for Democracy in Chile and other solidarity campaigns.

Cecilia Vicuña is an internationally renowned visual artist and poet. Born in Chile in 1948, she lived in England between 1972 and 1975. After a period in Bogota, Colombia, she settled in New York City, where she lives and works today. At the Venice Biennale in 2022 she won the Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement.
Luke Roberts, author of Home Radio (2021), is Senior Lecturer in Modern Poetry at King’s College London.
Amy Tobin, author of Women Artists Together: Art in the Age of Women’s Liberation (2023), is Associate Professor in History of Art and Curator at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge.

‘How many artists are there? Choose where you want to work, choose. Invent your task, do it! All together to destroy reactionary ideas, bourgeois ideology, individualism, solemnity, all white, European, capitalist ways of existence!’

 – Cecilia Vicuña, Saborami, 1973

As well as Saborami, Cecilia Vicuña has also kindly contributed a poster for our fundraising poster series. Sol y Dar y Dad is commissioned by Book Works for What did you do… (2024), a poster project to mark 40 years of commissions and book making, made in response to the urgent humanitarian crisis in Gaza overshadowing all our activity. We have invited artists to contribute work that speaks to ideas of solidarity with the oppressed, and liberation for the occupied, for a series of A3 posters.

Sol y Dar y Dad is inkjet printed in an edition of 250 unsigned copies, priced at £75 + VAT. Book Works would like to thank K2 Screen for their help with this project.

All proceeds from this project will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).

Other participating artists in this project include: Hamja Ahsan, Banu Cennetoğlu, Marcus Coates, Jesse Darling, Jeremy Deller, Falgoush Collective, Fehras Publishing Practices with Nancy Naser Al Deen and Sina Ahmadi, Dora García, Deborah-Joyce Holman, Karl Holmqvist, Marianne Keating, Rosalind Nashashibi, Prem Sahib, Tai Shani, Sofia Niazi, Katrina Palmer, Charlie Prodger, Anne Tallentire, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan and Rosa-Johan Uddoh.