Carolina Caycedo: A Landscape Is Never Natural

Carolina Caycedo’s multimedia practice explores the interconnectedness of nature and social systems. Through media such as video, sculpture, performance, and installation the artist has created a continually expanding oeuvre that details how the classification of the environment as “other” has allowed for myriad harmful alterations to be made to the natural landscape. The pieces that comprise A Landscape Is Never Natural focus on water, highlighting the ways in which human interventions in the form of dams and mines are posited as necessary activities that further “progress” – extreme modifications to the landscape that are normalized in the pursuit of capital in ways that minimize their impact on communities, pollution levels, the suppression of traditional forms of labour, and displacement.

Deftly illustrating how curbing water is a form of neo-colonial violence that extends throughout the Americas, frequently affecting Indigenous, Black, and riverine communities, the artist draws a through line that connects the exploitation and erosion of resources with cultural erasure. Caycedo’s work, however, also captures gestures of resistance that counter ecological devastation: efforts to position the body as a site of protest and collective action, acts of decolonization and assertions of Indigenous stewardship, and recognition of the right of the environment to exist as a self-governing entity.

Q & A: Carolina Caycedo

Carolina Caycedo is a London-born, Colombian, Los Angeles-based multi-media artist whose practice posits “territorial resistance, solidarity economies, and housing as a human right.” In advance of her upcoming solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Guelph in the Fall of 2020, A Landscape Is Never Natural, she has answered a few questions that lead us to a deeper understanding of artistic motivations, her hopes for audience engagement, and her overall practice through themes of ecofeminism, decolonization and environmental justice.

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Image detail: Carolina Caycedo, Serpent River Book / Libro Río Serpiente, 2017. Courtesy of the artist