BOSTON, MASS.- The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston presents a solo exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Carolina Caycedo (b. 1978 in London, UK). Through a variety of mediums including sculpture, performance, drawing, and video, Caycedo’s artwork investigates vital questions related to asymmetrical power relations, dispossession, extraction of resources, and environmental justice. The ICA is presenting the culmination of Caycedo's Cosmotarrayas, a series of hanging sculptures assembled with handmade fishing nets and other objects collected during field research in different riverine communities affected by the privatization of waterways. On view January 20 through July 5, 2020, Carolina Caycedo is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager.

The Cosmotarrayas are part of an ongoing project started in 2012 titled Be Dammed that has examined the wide-reaching impacts of dams built along waterways by transnational corporations, particularly those in Latin American countries such as Brazil or Colombia (where Caycedo was raised and frequently returns). Powerful objects borne out of extensive fieldwork in communities on “the front lines of environmental justice,” as she says, each Cosmotarraya is intimately linked to specific people, rivers, traditions, and cultures. As such, the Cosmotarrayas demonstrate the meaningful connectivity and exchange at the heart of Caycedo’s practice, as many of the nets and other objects were entrusted to her by individuals no longer able to use them. At the same time, they also represent the dispossession of these individuals and their continued resistance to corporations and governments seeking to control the flow of water and thus their way of life.

“For Caycedo, the material qualities of the fishing net—porous, malleable, and woven by hand—offer a potent counterpoint to the immovable, destructive architecture of the dam. The Cosmotarrayas embody a form of resistance that simultaneously raises our consciousness about land, history, and culture,” said De Blois.

Caycedo was born in London in 1978. She received a M.F.A. from Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and a B.F.A. from Los Andes University, Bogotá, Colombia. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with recent exhibitions at venues such as Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, MA; Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, Canada; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Nottingham Contemporary, UK; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Nuevo Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Guatemala; Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles; and Espacio Odeon, Bogotá, among others. Her work has been included in several major recurring group exhibitions, including the 2018 edition of Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the 2016 Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil; the 2014 Berlin Biennale; the 2009 New Museum Triennial, New York; the 2006 Whitney Biennial, New York; and the 2003 Venice Biennale, Italy.