Through drawings, sculpture, installation, film, photo-collage, ceremony and performance, Carolina Caycedo invites us to consider human companionship with waterways, plants, animals and earth minerals, while highlighting and in some cases mourning the violent deaths of activists advocating for the same.
At the Biennale Arte 2026, Caycedo presents three works from the series We Save Our Seed for the Following Season (2023), tapestries that combine Jacquard weaving, printed cotton twill and organic materials. They honour women who develop and keep land-based knowledge. One celebrates Akiko Suda and Yuko Fujikawa, Japanese Americans incarcerated by the United States government during World War II, who planted gardens to nourish the bodies and souls of their compatriots. A second depicts Meda DeWitt, a Tlingit healer and activist in Alaska, gathering crowberries with her daughter. The third represents Ella Besaw (1902-1990), medicine woman of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians in Wisconsin, among sacred plants.
Ñañay Kculli ~ S’oam Bawi Wenag ~ Kiik K’úum (2024) comprises three seeds made of wood, each suspended in a jute net. It refers to the Three Sisters, an Indigenous agricultural technique employed throughout North and Central America whereby corn, beans and squash are grown interdependently. This transnational practice reminds us of the capacity of seeds, like cultures, to travel in space and time, modeling sovereignty, mutualism and collaboration.
—Atabey fka Carlos Maria Romero
