Esto No Es Agua / This Is Not Water

2015 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

5:20 minutes

Carolina Caycedo

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Carolina Caycedo’s practice conveys her very personal passion and relationship to water, as a powerful necessity and spiritual reminder. Esto No Es Agua / This Is Not Water is a portrait of the Las Damas waterfall in the town of Garzón, Huila in Southern Colombia. The video is composed of footage of the waterfall that is at times mirrored, distorted, obstructed, or kaldeiscoped in different ways. Positioning Las Damas as an active participant in environmental conflict, this work acknowledges and asks the viewer to revise and decolonize their practical, cultural, and spiritual relationships with the land. Featuring manipulated sounds produced by the Las Damas waterfall, the soundtrack is mixed with samples of a traditional indigenous millo reed flute.

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Carolina Caycedo’s work triumphs environmental justice through demonstrations of resistance and solidarity. The artist uses drawing, photography, film, and performance at venues and vehicles for research and action. Caycedo’s work addresses and laments the corruption of power and the destruction of nature by corporate greed, justified by progress. With regard to pressing concerns of global climate change, causing destruction to communities via droughts and natural disasters, Carolina’s works address the implications and consequences of such carelessness towards the future of the earth and its inhabitants. The artist’s use of technology to mediate these concepts provides a harmonious relationship between content and form. Caycedo’s work offers utopian models to inhabit in a world in which individuals and communities are increasingly subject to commodification, exploitation, and discrimination.

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Colors:

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• body_of_water.n.01
• environmental.a.02
• colonialism.n.01
• industry.n.01
• resistance.n.01
• protest.n.01
• landscape.n.01