LASS 2024: Carolina Caycedo

Scintillae on Earth

Caycedo's recent works emerge from her ongoing spiritual fieldwork and research on the eco-social activism of frontline communities impacted by the climate crisis, and the demand for a Just Transition. In opposition to the Western extractivist approach to energy production, she explores ways of being on Earth that foster sustaining and caring relationships with material and social landscapes.

Caycedo channels ancestral understandings of the scintillae (tiny sparks) that cycle from cosmos to Earth, tracing constellations of meaning through the talismanic properties of certain objects, reciprocal practices of payment, and the invaluable labor of women in sustaining community life and the environment. She proposes works with the power to protect, heal, and transmit knowledge.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

CAROLINA CAYCEDO is a Colombian multidisciplinary artist living in Los Angeles. Her photographs, artist’s books, sculptures, performances, films, and installations are gateways into larger discussions about how we treat each other and the world around us. Through her studio practice and fieldwork with communities impacted by large-scale infrastructure and other extraction projects, she invites viewers to consider the unsustainable pace of growth under capitalism and how we might embrace resistance and solidarity. Process and participation are central to Caycedo’s practice; she contributes to the reconstruction of environmental and historical memory as a fundamental space for climate and social justice. Informed by Indigenous and feminist epistemologies, she confronts the role of the colonial gaze in the privatization and dispossession of land and water. Caycedo conjures common goods and collective bodies in what she refers to as Geochoreographies, to examine the environmental, economic, social, and spiritual impacts of extractivist industries, raising questions about the future of our shared resources.

Caycedo is a 2023–2024 Soros Arts Fellow and a 2023–2024 Getty Research Institute Artist in Residence. She received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She has been a United States Artists fellow and has held residencies at the DAAD in Berlin; The Huntington Libraries, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California; and the Office for Contemporary Art in Norway, among others. Caycedo has participated in numerous international biennales including the Sharjah, Sydney, Chicago Architecture, São Paulo, Istanbul, Berlin, Havana, and Whitney Biennials; and has received funding from the ViaArt Fund, Creative Capital, Prince Claus Fund, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, California Community Foundation, Colombian Ministry of Culture, and Getty Foundation. Caycedo’s recent solo museum exhibitions include: Spiral for Shared Dreams at MoMA NYC (2023-2024); Land of Friends at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle (2022-2023) and Artium Museum, Vitoria (2023-2024); The Blessings of the Mystery at Ballroom Marfa (2022); From the Bottom of the River at the MCA Chicago (2020-2021); Cosmotarrayas at ICA Boston (2020); Wanaawna, Rio Hondo, and Other Spirits at the Orange County Museum of Art (2019-2020), and Care Report at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Poland (2019-2020). Caycedo's work is included in the collections of major institutions including: Tate Modern, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco; Seoul Museum of Art; The Huntington Art Museum, San Marino; Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand; Banco de la República, Bogotá; and Migros Museum, Zurich.

ABOUT THE LATIN AMERICAN SPEAKER SERIES

The Latin American Speakers Series aims to contextualize contemporary art within Canada as well as enrich our understanding of the art from both the continent and the Diaspora through lectures, audio-visual presentations, group critiques with local artists, workshops and online interviews.

The Latin American Speakers Series is presented by Sur Gallery and Latin American Canadian Art Projects, and is curated by Tamara Toledo.”

ABOUT THE GALLERY

Sur Gallery is Toronto's first gallery space dedicated to the exhibition and critical engagement of contemporary Latin American Art and is a project of LACAP.

For information contact:

416-654-7787

info@surgallery.ca

www.surgallery.ca

www.surgalleryvirtual.ca

www.facebook.com/LACAPsurgallery

www.youtube.com/user/lacapcanada/videos

LACAP and Sur Gallery gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts; Ontario Arts Council; Government of Ontario; Toronto Arts Council; and The City of Toronto through section 37. Sur Gallery also acknowledges its sponsors See Through Web and Hoffworks Productions.