CAROLINA CAYCEDO
Fuel to Fire, 2023
single channel, HD video
7 minutes, 28 seconds
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation
Courtesy of the Artist, Commonwealth and Council (Los Angeles/Mexico City), and Instituto de Visión (Bogota/NYC)
Riverside Park
Fuel to Fire is part of the larger installation Agua Pesada /Alma' Althaqil (Heavy Water) commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation for Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present. This project draws on Carolina Caycedo’s extensive research into mineral mining in relation to labour, environmental extraction, and the energy conversion processes required to meet the rising need for energy transition.
Caycedo's art practice is steeped in environmental research about the future of shared resources, environmental justice, and cultural biodiversity. Through her ongoing multi-media project Be Dammed, which includes performance, sculpture, and video, Caycedo delves into the effects of large-scale energy infrastructures on bodies of water and the communities and ecologies who depend on these resources.
Fuel to Fire was made within the context of the United Arab Emirates as a response to the announcement of cooperation between the Abu Dhabi Investment Company Mubadala and the Aris Gold Corporation. This joint venture company now plans to undertake the Soto Norte Gold Project within the Páramo de Santurbán high mountains of northwest Colombia. This mountain range holds large quantities of highly sought after deposits of gold while also sustaining a complex moorland ecosystem that supplies water to more than two million people in eastern Colombia. Caycedo calls her video a spell or act of magic to protect this important ecosystem.
The video depicts a ceremony in which gold is being paid back to a body of water through pagamento (payment). The pagamento is a fundamental Indigenous ecological and economic protocol that maintains the flow and balance of life cycles. It is understood that when accumulation happens, sickness arrives. It is then necessary to give back by letting go of something that is dear, that implies labour, or that is highly symbolic. Through a rich collage of imagery that fuses bodies, minerals, and water, Caycedo points to our interdependence on minerals in our modern lives and the disconnection to land, water, and tradition that happens through large-scale profit-driven resource extraction. Fuel to Fire imagines other ways of relating to these minerals that involve reciprocity and ceremony, and re-centres Indigenous sovereignty.
Artist Biography
Carolina Caycedo was born in London, UK, to Columbian parents and is currently based in Los Angeles. Caycedo is an Inaugural Latinx Artist Fellow and a Borderlands Fellow at the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics. Her projects have been supported by VIA Art Fund, Creative Capital, Prince Claus Fund, Arts Matters, and Harpo Foundation. She has developed publicly engaged projects in major cities across the globe, and had solo exhibitions at the MoMA NYC, Baltic Newcastle, Ballroom Marfa, Oxy Arts Los Angeles, ICA Boston, MCA Chicago, Muzeum Sztuki Lodz, Secession Vienna, and Orange County Museum of Art. Her work has been shown in several international biennales, including Chicago Architecture Biennial, 2019; Hammer Museum Made in L.A. Biennial, 2018; São Paulo Art Biennial, 2016; Pontevedra Biennial, 2010; Havana Biennial, 2009; San Juan Poligraphic Triennial, 2009; Whitney Biennial, 2006; and Venice Biennale, 2003.
A D D I T I O N A L R E S O U R C E S
Carolina Caycedo
Fuel to Fire, 2023
single channel, HD video
7 minutes, 28 seconds
Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation
Courtesy of the Artist, Commonwealth and Council (Los Angeles/Mexico City), and Instituto de Visión (Bogota/NYC)
Photos: Frank Luca, 2023