Yaqui, Yuma, Elwha, 2016

Carolina Caycedo
1978, London, United Kingdom. Lives in La Jagua, Colombia, and Los Angeles, California, USA

Carolina Caycedo’s artistic practice focuses on discussing contexts impacted by large-scale, infrastructure construction projects of a developmental nature. In her recent research, she analyzes the environmental and social damage resulting from the building of dams and the controlling of the natural courses of water. By means of her involvement with groups and communities affected by these transformations, the artist investigates ideas of flow, assimilation, resistance, representation, control, nature and culture. A Gente Rio–Be Dammed [The People River-Be Dammed] (2016) is a project that consists of research in archives, field studies and activities with the riverside communities affected by the privatization of waters. The works produced for the 32nd Bienal address the life involved in these rivers and their shores. The work is comprised of distinct elements, such as montages of satellite photographs of the Itaipu Power Plant, the Belo Monte Dam and the Bento Rodrigues Dam before and after the disaster (Mariana, Minas Gerais); a video shot by Caycedo in these regions; cast nets collected during her field research inserted in the gaps between the levels of the Bienal Pavilion; and drawings that tell the narratives of the rivers Yuma (Colombia), Yaqui (Mexico), Elwha (USA), Watu, also known as Doce River, and Iguaçu (Brazil), as living entities possessing their own histories.