An MCA exclusive! This scarf is light, thin and soft with a matte finish and includes a 1cm (.4”) fringe.

From Caycedo, "Water Portraits Series (ongoing since 2015), where river and waterfall images are mirrored, altered and remixed to create a series of portraits that conjure bodies of water as living entities, and as active political agents in environmental conflicts, rather than resources for human extractivism. The fabric as surface becomes a fluid and malleable structure, that allows for diverse installation forms; its performative potential opens a space for interaction and experimentation, the Water Portraits can be wrapped around the body, submerged in water, hanged, stretched or crumpled among other actions. The textile and cinematographic imagery builds upon indigenous medicinal and shamanic visions, inviting the viewer to experience and find their own images; calling for a decolonization of the gaze by un-learning euro-centric and patriarchal artistic formal formats, such as the landscape, a chance to challenge our relationship to ‘nature’.

These portraits of contested sites draw from hallucinations experienced during traditional indigenous medicine practices, as a way to cast visual spells over progress and development, inviting us to revise and decolonize our contemplative and utilitarian relationships towards landscape and infrastructure.

Multiple Clitoris (red) portrays the femme strength found in the Iguazu Falls , on the Iguazu river between Brazil and Argentina."

Caycedo is known for her photocollages, printed on long banners of cotton canvas. It felt organic to translate her mirrored, remixed photos of water onto soft and luxurious cashmere and silk scarves, which are similarly fluid and invite interaction. Each 80” long scarf bears an excerpt from one of three artworks: Multiple Clitoris, (2016) St. Ana Pacifica, (2019) and Simulacrum (Nagold River, Germany), 2015 individually exhibit the particular voices and forms of rivers, undulations and textures building upon indigenous and ancestral visions.

Caycedo’s Water Portraits series interrogates the conventions of picturing the landscape as distinct from humans. Creating enveloping fabric installations with kaleidoscope-like imagery, derived from an experience the artist had with ancestral medicine, Caycedo portrays rivers as a living and spiritual entity that flows within and through us.

Carolina Caycedo: From the Bottom of the River is presented at the MCA Feb 12, 2020–Sep 12, 2021. Learn more.