Work in Progress: Carolina Caycedo
The LA-based artist talks about environmental justice and memory ahead of her show of new work at Frieze Los Angeles
The LA-based artist talks about environmental justice and memory ahead of her show of new work at Frieze Los Angeles
As Carolina Caycedo prepares to show new work with Commonwealth and Council at Frieze Los Angeles, she discusses art’s responsibility to create counter narratives, how she sees herself as part of LA’s ecosystem and what it means to commit to an idea long-term.
Livia Russell Can you talk about your new sculptures for Frieze Los Angeles?
Carolina Caycedo I’m bringing new work from two ongoing series. I’ve been doing my ‘Cosmotarrayas’ for over a decade, using artisanal fishing nets to create hanging sculptures. I think of sculpture as something light and translucent, instead of heavy and monolithic. The fishing net has featured extensively in my video, performance and sculptural works. It offers a fun formal element to play with in terms of colour, shape and form. It also has strong political, social and economic symbolism in territories across the Americas. Weaving a fishing net or casting a net into a river speaks about accumulated and embodied knowledge passed from generation to generation, which has traditionally been stigmatized by Western canons. Extractive and capitalist projects break this transmission of knowledge.
LR You’re also bringing new drawings to the fair, what was your starting point for these?
CC I’m showing three new drawings from my ‘Mineral Intensive’ series, which I began three years ago. These works are inspired by the World Bank report Minerals for Climate Action: The Mineral Intensity of the Clean Energy Transition (2020). The report lists the ‘critical minerals’ that will be exploited from here to 2050 at a 500 percent growth rate to supply the demand for transition energy technologies. I portray each of these minerals in a drawing. At Frieze Los Angeles, these will be lead, manganese and mercury. Every drawing contains a Mappa Mundi, showing where the largest deposits of these minerals are located, alongside images of the extraction process, labour conditions and contamination of human bodies. Sometimes there are pieces of the raw mineral itself, like aluminium, copper or silver leaf.
The work is a criticism of the greenwashing of the energy transition that we are witnessing today. Yes, we need an energy transition, but we need a just and fair one, where the impacts of these extractions are not lived by people, communities and ecosystems in the Global South to enable the decarbonization of the North.
LR You have made work in support of the Protect Thacker Pass campaign. How do you see the relationship between art and activism?
CC Art has the possibility and the responsibility to create counter narratives. I think about the moment we are in and how that translates into image-making. I’m very attentive to the agendas of those who put their bodies and lives on the front lines of environmental justice. With some people, I have very long-standing conversations, mostly with groups in Latin America. With Thacker Pass, I made the image without even knowing them. I knew there was an urgency to talk about the planned lithium extraction. That’s why, in the lithium drawing of ‘Mineral Intensive’, I included an image of the Thacker Pass picket line. A successful work of art is one that can exist in two worlds – the world of an art fair or institution and that of the struggle.
With a new administration in the US that has ‘drill, baby, drill’ as one of its mottos, my drawings acquire another meaning.
LR What is the significance of the multi-perspective structure of your drawings?
CC To make these images, first I do a wide search and gather images from mining magazines, online and the news. It starts as a kind of digital collage and then it gets rendered. It’s a way of thinking about storytelling: you see a big image, but then you can start seeing connections between the little vignettes. I am playing with perspective and proportion. For example, in the drawing dedicated to mercury, a pair of hands with two gold pans is the universe that holds the whole activity. The image becomes a kind of wild dream. How do you compose an image where there’s an entry point for everyone? That’s our intention. Maybe somebody recognizes the gold panning hands, and somebody else recognizes the Tesla logo.
LR How do your series develop over the years?
CC With a new administration in the US that has ‘drill, baby, drill’ as one of its mottos, my ‘Mineral Intensive’ drawings acquire another meaning, and the context induces another reading of them. As an artist, it’s so important to allow yourself to commit to an idea long-term, because then you can see how that idea responds to the moment, or how the moment responds to you. It’s also a way to resist the art market that is always demanding something new. There is validity in holding onto ideas, expressions and languages long-term.
Weaving a fishing net speaks about embodied knowledge passed from generation to generation.
At the beginning, the nets for the ‘Cosmotarrayas’ were given to me by people who no longer had a use for them because of the dams being constructed in the rivers. Now, I’ve worked with artisanal weavers to get them custom-made or buy them in markets. It’s important to continue talking about ancestral knowledge as a stronghold against capitalism, where it seems that the only thing we are able to do is to order something online and get it delivered. As humans, we have so much more potential. We carry so much knowledge in our bodies.
LR What is your relationship to Los Angeles?
CC The first time I came to Los Angeles, I was really impressed by the art community, or the multiple art communities. As a Latin American woman in Los Angeles, I felt at home, but there were also so many new things that I’d never experienced in my life. That was the city’s double charm.
Immigrant stories have built this city. On one hand, LA is a sanctuary city – all of us are welcome from different places – but on the other hand, it’s still very segregated, and that’s painful. You can see it with the fires, too. You have a place like the Palisades, where a wealthier community was impacted, and you have a place like Altadena where, historically, Black families have been able to construct generational wealth. For those distinct communities, the implications are going to be very different. Members of the Altadena community were entering a disaster zone without any real guidelines about how to protect themselves. It shows the strong environmental racism that continues. Where is the toxic debris from the fires going to be taken? Where are the deposits of trash in the city? In the Black and Brown neighbourhoods.
LR Indigenous land practices, such as burning, help mitigate wildfire risk. How is Los Angeles engaging with diverse approaches to land stewardship?
CC There’s still a lot of work to do, but in the last ten years, I have witnessed a centring of voices and knowledge of native peoples. Prescribed fires, or cultural burnings, have started to happen in California. In our community, we have very well recognized Tongva artists making and curating work, building their own histories and bridging the languages of traditional arts and contemporary art. But there are obstacles, like the federal government right now. It’s going to happen from the ground up, and it’s a lot of work.
Ancestral knowledge is a stronghold against capitalism.
My contribution to PST ART: Art & Science Collide is an exhibition called ‘We Place Life at the Center / Situamos la vida en el centro’ at the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College. This exhibition is not about my work, but about the relationships I build through art-making that inform, feed and inspire what I do. We have work by Coyotl + Macehualli, a community organization that works to preserve, 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 action that already exist.
LR How do you see yourself as part of LA’s ecosystem?
CC An ecosystem is something that entails human activity. The idea of nature as a human void is not a reality. My first relationship is with the land that we inhabit. In our garden at home, the first thing we did was rip out the lawn and the water-sucking plants. In their place we planted native species and plants that support pollinators. I’m an immigrant settler here in the city. In the last years, we’ve learned more because the Native communities are generous in sharing their knowledge. We’ve learnt to differentiate between the species that we can plant, and the sacred species that we wouldn’t plant unless we knew how to use them, or if they’re going be part of a native circle or ritual. I grew up in London as an immigrant, moved to Bogotá and then to Puerto Rico, where I was also an immigrant. It’s always been through people who are from the place that I can build relationships to the local nature and its protocols.
LR What does time in your studio mean to you?
CC My studio is a team – me, Fleurette West, Sam Sklar, Sean Grattan and Jessica Gonzalez. None of the things I do, I do alone. It’s always a dialogue of negotiation and discussion. We’re in a building in the midst of the Flower District, where we live like a little community. I have to drive through Skid Row every day to come to my studio. It’s a stark reminder of the city’s inequalities. You arrive and it’s all flowers and flowers. We’re close to the LAPD (the Los Angeles Poverty Department), an organization who has been working for 30 years with LA’s houseless community and the Bendix building, which has a number of galleries and artist studios.
LR What’s next for you in 2025?
CC At the end of February, we are closing the exhibition at Vincent Price Art Museum with a gathering on Catalina Island, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of LA, bringing together people leading eco-social transitions across the Americas. This hemispheric view is important for me. As a Latin American woman living in the US, I feel the responsibility of connecting North and South through my work.
On 1 March, we have a huge performance at USC called El Respiro / Respire, part of my series of ‘geochoreographies’. It’s a pause to gain strength for the long-term struggle. In April, I leave to go to Puerto Rico for a year as an artist in residence with Para la Naturaleza, a conservation NGO that works with artists to think about the environment, conservation and ecosystemic restoration. That will be a little respiro for me too.
Carolina Caycedo is presented by Commonwealth and Council at Frieze Los Angeles 2025. ‘We Place Life at the Center / Situamos la vida en el centro’ is at the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College until 1 March 2025.
Caycedo co-organizes LA AYUDA, an initiative supporting the most vulnerable communities of Los Angeles County in the wake of the wildfires. LA AYUDA is raising funds by asking artists from across the world to make a cornerstone to be sold on a sliding scale.
Further Information
Frieze Los Angeles, 20 – 23 February 2025, Santa Monica Airport.
Frieze is proud to support the LA Arts Community Fire Fund, led by the J. Paul Getty Trust. In addition to Frieze’s contribution, 10% of the value of all newly purchased tickets is also being donated to the fund.
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Frieze Los Angeles is supported by global lead partner Deutsche Bank, continuing its legacy of celebrating artistic excellence on an international scale.
Main Image: Carolina Caycedo, Lead Intensive, 2025. Courtesy: the artist
