As Carolina Caycedo prepares to indicate new work with Commonwealth and Council at Frieze Los Angeles, she discusses artwork’s duty to create counter narratives, how she sees herself as a part of LA’s ecosystem and what it means to decide to an concept long-term.
Livia Russell Are you able to discuss your new sculptures for Frieze Los Angeles?
Carolina Caycedo I’m bringing new work from two ongoing collection. I’ve been doing my ‘Cosmotarrayas’ for over a decade, utilizing artisanal fishing nets to create hanging sculptures. I consider sculpture as one thing gentle and translucent, as an alternative of heavy and monolithic. The fishing internet has featured extensively in my video, efficiency and sculptural works. It provides a enjoyable formal ingredient to play with by way of color, form and kind. It additionally has sturdy political, social and financial symbolism in territories throughout the Americas. Weaving a fishing internet or casting a internet right into a river speaks about amassed and embodied information handed from technology to technology, which has historically been stigmatized by Western canons. Extractive and capitalist initiatives break this transmission of data.
LR You’re additionally bringing new drawings to the honest, what was your place to begin for these?
CC I’m displaying three new drawings from my ‘Mineral Intensive’ collection, which I started three years in the past. These works are impressed by the World Financial institution report Minerals for Local weather Motion: The Mineral Depth of the Clear Vitality Transition (2020). The report lists the ‘important minerals’ that might be exploited from right here to 2050 at a 500 % progress charge to produce the demand for transition vitality applied sciences. I painting every of those minerals in a drawing. At Frieze Los Angeles, these might be lead, manganese and mercury. Each drawing accommodates a Mappa Mundi, displaying the place the biggest deposits of those minerals are positioned, alongside photos of the extraction course of, labour circumstances and contamination of human our bodies. Generally there are items of the uncooked mineral itself, like aluminium, copper or silver leaf.
The work is a criticism of the greenwashing of the vitality transition that we’re witnessing in the present day. Sure, we’d like an vitality transition, however we’d like a simply and honest one, the place the impacts of those extractions should not lived by individuals, communities and ecosystems within the International South to allow the decarbonization of the North.
LR You will have made work in assist of the Defend Thacker Move marketing campaign. How do you see the connection between artwork and activism?
CC Artwork has the chance and the duty to create counter narratives. I take into consideration the second we’re in and the way that interprets into image-making. I’m very attentive to the agendas of those that put their our bodies and lives on the entrance strains of environmental justice. With some individuals, I’ve very long-standing conversations, principally with teams in Latin America. With Thacker Move, I made the picture with out even understanding them. I knew there was an urgency to speak concerning the deliberate lithium extraction. That’s why, within the lithium drawing of ‘Mineral Intensive’, I included a picture of the Thacker Move picket line. A profitable murals is one that may exist in two worlds – the world of an artwork honest or establishment and that of the wrestle.
With a brand new administration within the US that has ‘drill, child, drill’ as considered one of its mottos, my drawings purchase one other which means.
LR What’s the significance of the multi-perspective construction of your drawings?
CC To make these photos, first I do a large search and collect photos from mining magazines, on-line and the information. It begins as a sort of digital collage after which it will get rendered. It’s a mind-set about storytelling: you see a giant picture, however then you can begin seeing connections between the little vignettes. I’m taking part in with perspective and proportion. For instance, within the drawing devoted to mercury, a pair of arms with two gold pans is the universe that holds the entire exercise. The picture turns into a sort of wild dream. How do you compose a picture the place there’s an entry level for everybody? That’s our intention. Possibly any individual acknowledges the gold panning arms, and any individual else acknowledges the Tesla brand.
LR How do your collection develop through the years?
CC With a brand new administration within the US that has ‘drill, child, drill’ as considered one of its mottos, my ‘Mineral Intensive’ drawings purchase one other which means, and the context induces one other studying of them. As an artist, it’s so essential to permit your self to decide to an concept long-term, as a result of then you’ll be able to see how that concept responds to the second, or how the second responds to you. It’s additionally a manner to withstand the artwork market that’s at all times demanding one thing new. There may be validity in holding onto concepts, expressions and languages long-term.
Weaving a fishing internet speaks about embodied information handed from technology to technology.
Firstly, the nets for the ‘Cosmotarrayas’ got to me by individuals who now not had a use for them due to the dams being constructed within the rivers. Now, I’ve labored with artisanal weavers to get them custom-made or purchase them in markets. It’s essential to proceed speaking about ancestral information as a stronghold in opposition to capitalism, the place it appears that evidently the one factor we’re capable of do is to order one thing on-line and get it delivered. As people, we have now a lot extra potential. We supply a lot information in our our bodies.
LR What’s your relationship to Los Angeles?
CC The primary time I got here to Los Angeles, I used to be actually impressed by the artwork group, or the a number of artwork communities. As a Latin American girl in Los Angeles, I felt at dwelling, however there have been additionally so many new issues that I’d by no means skilled in my life. That was town’s double attraction.
Immigrant tales have constructed this metropolis. On one hand, LA is a sanctuary metropolis – all of us are welcome from totally different locations – however alternatively, it’s nonetheless very segregated, and that’s painful. You possibly can see it with the fires, too. You will have a spot just like the Palisades, the place a wealthier group was impacted, and you’ve got a spot like Altadena the place, traditionally, Black households have been capable of assemble generational wealth. For these distinct communities, the implications are going to be very totally different. Members of the Altadena group have been coming into a catastrophe zone with none actual tips about how one can defend themselves. It exhibits the sturdy environmental racism that continues. The place is the poisonous particles from the fires going to be taken? The place are the deposits of trash within the metropolis? Within the Black and Brown neighbourhoods.
LR Indigenous land practices, corresponding to burning, assist mitigate wildfire danger. How is Los Angeles participating with numerous approaches to land stewardship?
CC There’s nonetheless quite a lot of work to do, however within the final ten years, I’ve witnessed a centring of voices and information of native peoples. Prescribed fires, or cultural burnings, have began to occur in California. In our group, we have now very nicely acknowledged Tongva artists making and curating work, constructing their very own histories and bridging the languages of conventional arts and modern artwork. However there are obstacles, just like the federal authorities proper now. It’s going to occur from the bottom up, and it’s quite a lot of work.
Ancestral information is a stronghold in opposition to capitalism.
My contribution to PST ART: Artwork & Science Collide is an exhibition referred to as ‘We Place Life on the Heart / Situamos la vida en el centro’ on the Vincent Worth Artwork Museum at East Los Angeles Faculty. This exhibition is just not about my work, however concerning the relationships I construct by means of art-making that inform, feed and encourage what I do. We have now work by Coyotl + Macehualli, a group group that works to protect, restore and defend the hills of Northeast LA and El Sereno, and Mercedes Dorame, a Tongva artist. My work is about nurturing networks of solidarity and motion that exist already.
LR How do you see your self as a part of LA’s ecosystem?
CC An ecosystem is one thing that entails human exercise. The thought of nature as a human void is just not a actuality. My first relationship is with the land that we inhabit. In our backyard at dwelling, the very first thing we did was rip out the garden and the water-sucking vegetation. Of their place we planted native species and vegetation that assist pollinators. I’m an immigrant settler right here within the metropolis. Within the final years, we’ve realized extra as a result of the Native communities are beneficiant in sharing their information. We’ve learnt to distinguish between the species that we are able to plant, and the sacred species that we wouldn’t plant until we knew how one can use them, or in the event that they’re going be a part of a local circle or ritual. I grew up in London as an immigrant, moved to Bogotá after which to Puerto Rico, the place I used to be additionally an immigrant. It’s at all times been by means of people who find themselves from the place that I can construct relationships to the native nature and its protocols.
LR What does time in your studio imply to you?
CC My studio is a group – me, Fleurette West, Sam Sklar, Sean Grattan and Jessica Gonzalez. Not one of the issues I do, I do alone. It’s at all times a dialogue of negotiation and dialogue. We’re in a constructing within the midst of the Flower District, the place we dwell like a bit group. I’ve to drive by means of Skid Row day-after-day to return to my studio. It’s a stark reminder of town’s inequalities. You arrive and it’s all flowers and flowers. We’re near the LAPD (the Los Angeles Poverty Division), a corporation who has been working for 30 years with LA’s houseless group and the Bendix constructing, which has quite a few galleries and artist studios.
LR What’s subsequent for you in 2025?
CC On the finish of February, we’re closing the exhibition at Vincent Worth Artwork Museum with a gathering on Catalina Island, one of many Channel Islands off the coast of LA, bringing collectively individuals main eco-social transitions throughout the Americas. This hemispheric view is essential for me. As a Latin American girl residing within the US, I really feel the duty of connecting North and South by means of my work.
On 1 March, we have now an enormous efficiency at USC referred to as El Respiro / Respire, a part of my collection of ‘geochoreographies’. It’s a pause to achieve energy for the long-term wrestle. In April, I depart to go to Puerto Rico for a yr as an artist in residence with Para la Naturaleza, a conservation NGO that works with artists to consider the surroundings, conservation and ecosystemic restoration. That might be a bit respiro for me too.
Carolina Caycedo is offered by Commonwealth and Council at Frieze Los Angeles 2025. ‘We Place Life on the Heart / Situamos la vida en el centro’ is on the Vincent Worth Artwork Museum at East Los Angeles Faculty till 1 March 2025.
Caycedo co-organizes LA AYUDA, an initiative supporting essentially the most susceptible communities of Los Angeles County within the wake of the wildfires. LA AYUDA is elevating funds by asking artists from internationally to make a cornerstone to be bought on a sliding scale.
Additional Info
Frieze Los Angeles, 20 – 23 February 2025, Santa Monica Airport.
Frieze is proud to assist the LA Arts Group Fireplace Fund, led by the J. Paul Getty Belief. Along with Frieze’s contribution, 10% of the worth of all newly bought tickets can also be being donated to the fund.
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Foremost Picture: Carolina Caycedo, Lead Intensive, 2025. Courtesy: the artist
