Water runs through Carolina Caycedo’s practice; it is a living and spiritual entity with its own rights. In her multi-year project Be Dammed (2012–ongoing), Caycedo addresses, from both above and within, ongoing issues surrounding mega-dam projects that have shaped the political economies of Colombia, of Latin America, and of the world.

Her Serpent River Book (2017), winds and twists its way through the gallery like a river refusing to be tamed. Unfurling into space, it acts as a score, a workshop tool, a manifesto, a time capsule, a living archive, and much more. The video Esto No Es Agua / This Is Not Water (2015) is a similar water portrait of the Las Damas waterfall in Garzón, Huila, Southern Colombia. The soundtrack is composed by manipulating waterfall sounds, mixed with a traditional Indigenous millo reed flute.

Across the room, monumental in scale, Elwha’s Healing (2022) is a mural depicting the Elwha River in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, where dams built in the early 1900s have been removed following decades of activism. Focus shifts from the horizontality of the river book to the verticality of the healed environment. In this composition, Caycedo merges satellite views to create new images of the hydro-scape, rejecting the Western consumption of scenic nature imagery. This sense of entering the landscape and feeling its rhythm continues in Fuel to Fire (2023). This video captures a ritual of pagamento, a performance focusing on the wellbeing and conservation of Paramo de Santurbán, an ecosystem known for its gold deposits. In this Indigenous ecological and economic protocol, acts of giving back and letting go counter the sickness engendered by accumulation.

With the kind cooperation of the SBC Gallery