Carolina Caycedo

Artist’s Statement

As a woman of color, mother, and immigrant artist I am interested in the everyday as material source. I research how the cultural baggage you carry along affects local cultures, as well as how local culture can affect and inform individual practices including my own. My present body of work Be Dammed, focuses on discussing contexts impacted by large-scale infrastructure construction projects of an extractivist development nature. In my recent research I analyze the environmental and social damage resulting from the building of dams and the controlling of natural courses of water. By means of my involvement with groups and communities affected by these transformations, I investigate ideas of flow, assimilation, resistance, representation, control, nature and culture. My practice consists of research in archives, field studies and activities with riverside communities affected by and resisting dams in the Magdalena River in Colombia; The Yaqui River in Mexico; and the Xingu, Doce, Parana, and Rio Ribeira Rivers in Brazil. The works produced address the life involved in these rivers and their shores, and is comprised of distinct elements, such as montages of satellite photographs; video-essays; sculptures made of fishing nets collected during field work; performances; drawings that tell the narratives of the rivers as living entities possessing their own histories; and geochoreographies or collective actions that imprint a living image over the impacted landscapes. Be Dammed intersects social bodies with bodies of water, exploring public space in rural contexts across the Americas, and conjuring water as a common good.

Website: carolinacaycedo.com

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions from 2011-2016

2015
One Body of Water. The Bowtie Project, Los Angeles, California

2013
The Headlong Stream is Termed Violent, But the River Bed Hemming It In is Termed Violent By No One. DAAD Gallery, Berlin Germany

2013
Be Dammed. 18 St Arts Center, Santa Monica, California. 

2012
Humane Materiale. Hordaland Kunstsenter. Bergen, Norway.

Select Group Exhibitions from 2011-2016

2016
Incerteza Viva, 32 Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil.

2016
The Distance Plan: Climate and Infrastructure, Human Resources, Los Angeles.

2014
8 Berlin Biennial, Berlin, Germany

2012
Intense Proximity. La Triennale de Paris. Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France.

Select Fellowships and Awards 

2015
Creative Capital Visual Arts Award, U.S.

2015
Harpo Foundation Visual Artist Grant. U.S.

2013
Rethinking Public Space Grant. Prince Claus Fund. Amsterdam, Netherlands.

2012
DAAD. Artists-in-Berlin Residency Program. Berlin, Germany.

Select Community-based Artwork

2015
Huila’s Bleeding. Video Report, Creative Time Reports. Online.

2015
Humanitarian Aid for the First World, with Cambalache Colective. Nuit Blanche, Toronto, Canada.

2014
Geo-coreografias / Geo-choreographies, Magdalena River communities in Huila, Southern Colombia. 

Education

M.F.A., 2014
Roski School of Fine Arts. University of Southern California. Los Angeles

B.F.A., 1999
Los Andes University. Bogota, Colombia.