Washington Project the Arts (WPA) is pleased to present Land of Friends, a film by Los Angeles-based artist Carolina Caycedo. The program is part of “Perfect Knowledge of the Ground,” a WPA Bookshelf Project curated by DC-based artist Raina Martens. 

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Carolina Caycedo, Land of Friends, 2014

Virtual Screening, 38 mins., RSVP Here

Thursday, June 18 at 8:00-8:45 pm EST

“Land of Friends focuses on seemingly small images and micro moments of everyday life to highlight the tensions and struggles between local fishing and farming communities and the multinational corporations converting the Yuma into hydroelectric power. In the film, Carolyn Caycedo intersects footage recorded along the river with scenes of her tracing the flow of the river with a brush on paper and, towards the end, with images turned upside down. The choice of everyday gestures and these interventions acknowledge the small-scale informal economies along the river and the relationship people develop with bodies of water and their spiritual significance. Through the practice of appropriating for example satellite images and the insistence on developing alternative forms of representation, the film proposes the unlearning of our reductive and commodified perception of rivers.”

Note: Text courtesy of Carolina Caycedo

ABOUT THE FILM CREATOR

Carolina Caycedo (1978) is a London-born, Los Angeles-based, Colombian multidisciplinary artist known for her performances, films, artist’s books, sculptures, and installations that examine environmental and social issues. She participates in movements of territorial resistance, solidarity economies, and housing as a human right. Her work contributes to the construction of environmental historical memory, as a fundamental element for non-repetition of violence against human and non-human entities. 

Caycedo has participated in festivals worldwide, among them the Berlin Bienniale, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Istanbul Biennial, São Paulo Art Biennial, and the Whitney Biennial. Recent and upcoming solo shows include “Care Report” at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Poland; “Wanaawna, Rio Hondo and Other Spirits” at Orange County Museum of Art in Santa Ana, CA; “Cosmoatarrayas” at ICA Boston; and “From the Bottom of the River” at MCA Chicago.  She has held residencies at the DAAD in Berlin, the Huntington Libraries, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA; and Occidental College in Los Angeles. She is a member of the Los Angeles Tenants Union and the Rios Vivos Colombia Social Movement.

ABOUT “PERFECT KNOWLEDGE OF THE GROUND”

“Land is a scene of a crime and a strategy of freedom and liberation.” 

—Monica M. White

“Perfect Knowledge of the Ground” is a project curated by DC-based, transdisciplinary artist Raina Martens. Comprising of a virtual bookshelf, 25 limited limited-edition mail-order care packages, and a film screening, it responds to the capitalist and colonialist roots of our current ecological crisis by highlighting alternative agricultural practices.

Artist-curator Raina Martens writes: “This project is modeled on the sharing of critical knowledge and care… Instead of reproducing disastrous extractive logics, it turns to Black and Indigenous ways of knowing the ground to offer more reciprocal and collectively life-sustaining models for the future.”

The Virtual Bookshelf is open to the public and accessible here. The film screening is open to the public and requires an RSVP to view online.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Through writing, installation, and ceramic work, Raina Martens dramatizes entanglements between social and material worlds. They are a founding member of ​the Urban Soils Institute’s Art Extension Service, and helped design ​Project: Soils​, a collaborative initiative between artists and soil scientists. 

ABOUT WASHINGTON PROJECT FOR THE ARTS (WPA)

Founded in 1975, WPA supports experimental artist-driven research, production, and exchange. We value artists as public intellectuals, critical thinkers, idea generators, and organizers, and believe that through collaboration and partnership, artists can shape the meaningful discourses of our time.

In 2016, WPA became the first arts organization between New York and Miami to become W.A.G.E.-certified, meaning that WPA is one of a handful of entities nationwide that pays artists according to W.A.G.E.’s minimum payment standards. In 2017, we elected artists to our board of directors and invited artists to begin setting the agenda for our program activities. In 2018, this new artist-driven approach was officially adopted in the form of a new mission statement. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts recognized the change with an $80,000, two-year grant in support of this new direction. Two years later, they have stepped up their investment in local arts organizations and artists by partnering with WPA on Wherewithal Grants.