From january 29th

Central gallery

A Spiral for shared dreams

Carolina Caycedo

 

In 2012, construction began on the Quimbo hydroelectric dam, dividing the largest river in Colombia, the Río Yuma (or Magdalena). That same year, Carolina Caycedo (London, 1978) embarked on Be Dammed, a project of research and participation in ongoing community activism against the privatization of water. Through different strategies, which include video, installations, and performance, she has signaled the damage caused by major dams to the natural and social landscape.

 

The work of Carolina Caycedo revisits the indivisible union between human beings and nature. She blurs the conception of nature as a mere resource or object of study for our exploitation. Her artistic practice and involvement in resistance movements works against the unbridled exploitation of natural elements, collapse of ecosystems, devastation of local economies and resulting environmental crisis.

 

One of the components of this project is the series Cosmotarrayas, which involves works made with nets woven by hand in riverside communities affected by extractivist initiatives. Her collaboration with communities encompasses different geographies, including Colombia, Brazil, Guatemala, and the Philippines.

 

"The Cosmotarrayas may be read as a cosmos of people I have known and their stories of plunder and resistance; they operate as a connection between my community participation and my studio practice."

 

The artist has signaled the importance of fishing as part of a locally sustainable economy. She incorporates nets in her work in order to safeguard the ancestral knowledge of weaving as well as the bond of fisherfolk to water and to the history of water itself. In her work, the arrangement of elements allows us to imagine the movement of human bodies tossing the nets into bodies of water. The poetics of these sculptures that float in mid-air and are configured in a spiral form seeks an understanding of the environment as a common good, where only clean energies may safeguard the permanence of a planet eroded by inequity and overexploitation.

 

A Spiral for Shared Dreams was created for the Museo Universitario del Chopo with nets of fishing communities from the following collectives: Mujeres del Manglar in Zapotalito, Oaxaca; Comité Salvemos Temacapulín, Acasico y Palmarejo; Cooperativa Norte from Tecuala, Nayarit, and Colectiva Mujeres del Golfo de Baja California Sur.

 

 

Itzel Vargas Plata

 

 

 

 

 

Carolina Caycedo (Londres, 1978)  

Artista multidisciplinaria colombiana nacida en Londres, actualmente vive en Los Ángeles. Algunas de sus exposiciones individuales son: Care Report, en Muzeum Sztukoi, Łódź, Polonia; Wanaawna, Río Hondo and Others Spirits, en el Museo de Arte del Condado de Orange, California; Cosmotarrayas, en ICA, Boston; From the Bottom of the River, en MCA, Chicago. En 2019 su trabajo fue parte del 45 Salón Nacional de Artistas Colombia, Bienal de Arquitectura de Chicago, Sector Cinematográfico de Art Basel, en Basilea, y Artista Wanlass en Residencia 2020, en Occidental College, en Los Ángeles. Participa en Borderlands 2020-2022, en el Center for Imagination de la Borderlands-Arizona State University, y en el Vera List Center for Art and Politics. Es parte de Los Ángeles Tenants Union y del movimiento social Ríos Vivos Colombia.  

 

Ha realizado residencias en The Huntington Gardens, Libraries and Art Collections, en San Marino, y en el programa California DAAD artists-in-Berlín, entre otros. Ha recibido apoyo de Creative Capital, California Community Foundation, Departamento de Asuntos Culturales de Los Ángeles, Harpo Foundation, Art Matters, Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia, Arts Council UK y Prince Claus Fund.