This exhibition by the Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo (London, 1978) brings together a vast body of work that focuses on her research into social movements and community organisations opposing the construction of energy infrastructures, including large hydroelectric projects in various parts of the world. These organisational processes nurture and also produce ways of knowing that contradict the extractivist logics of the capitalist economy and governments that support these legally, organisationally and militarily. This long-term journey began in 2012 with the project Be Dammed and has led to the creation of a myriad of video, sculpture, installation, drawing, photography and performance works.

Caycedo explores different aspects of the struggles for environmental justice that imply critically rethinking the discourses that define water as a resource to serve humanity, based on the division between nature and culture created by modern thought, which implies a definition of humanity as separate from an environment that is viewed as domesticable and exploitable. Her work calls for a mutual understanding of the relationships between human and non-human beings and entities that inhabit the planet; a way of thinking shared by many indigenous peoples for whom the civilisational hierarchies of the West have led to a profound imbalance that today is referred to as climate change.

Land of Friends is the first European survey of Carolina Caycedo’s work, a co-production between the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art; Artium Museoa, Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country, and the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM).

On the occasion of the opening, the museum hosted a performance and a guided tour.

Curated by Irene Aristizábal at Baltic
Curated by Catalina Lozano at Artium Museoa

List of works  Publication