Growing Deep Roots
Los Angeles-based Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo addresses humanity's relationship with nature through her multidisciplinary artistic practice. Drawing on principles from environmental justice, Indigenous philosophies, and ecofeminism, Caycedo's works challenge us to under stand nature not as a resource to be exploited but as a living entity that unites people beyond borders. Her practice is animated by a sustained consideration of how we might give back to our ecosystems through art and in our everyday lives. This solo exhibition showcases new and recent works in sculpture, drawing, printmaking, and video that address the interrelated issues of water and land stewardship and just energy transition.
Caycedo's Plant Portraits \(2021-ongoing\) highlight systems of reciprocit y and collaboration between human and nonhuman entities, specifically the power of people and plants to care for and nurture one another. To create these works on paper Caycedo starts with scientific botanical illustrations but reorganizes them to represent both plant and human anatomy. In calling them "portraits," she reorients the Western portraiture tradition toward nonhuman living beings, presenting plants as subjects with agency while underscoring the vital and symbolic relationship we share with them.
Building on this exploration of plant life and reciprocity, the exhibition will also feature a new series of Root Portraits that examine not only what is visible above ground but also the equally crucial root-to-soil interactions happening below ground. Focusing on prairie grasses and the biodiversity of the Midwest, this body of work is informed in part by the artist's conversations with regional plant scientists and community members about perennial agricultural systems and just energy transition. Perennials-plants that return year after year-have deep roots that help co ntrol erosion and mitigate climate change while improving soil health and boosting biodiversity. Caycedo will create these new works at WashU's Island Press as the spring 2026 Arthur L. and Sheila Prensky Island Press Visiting Artist.
In contrast to these artworks centered on reciprocity and care, Caycedo's Mineral Intensive drawings \(2023-ongoing\) critique the increased extraction of minerals from the so-called Global South in the name of "clean energy" technologies. Rendered in vibrant colored pen cil, these drawings portray global mining industries-such as those involving lead, indium, and molybdenum- juxtaposed with depictions of the labor and environmental implications of the accelerating boom in extracting these critical materials for energy. The exhibition will also highlight Caycedo's ongoing engagement with rivers and the impact of extractivist infrastructures on both bodies of water and social bodies. With her Cosmotarrayas sculptures, she actively rethinks our exploitative relationship with water. Assembled with fishing nets collected during her field research in diverse riverine communities affected by the privatization of water, these delicate hanging sculptures act as connectors between her activism, community involvement, and studio practice. To create Celestial Autonomy, the Dance of Big Dipper and North Star \(2023\) Caycedo sourced dipnets, gill nets, floats, and buoys from local fishermen in Anchorage, Alaska, as well as from fishing supply stores and beach clean-up nonprofits. The everyday fishing nets represent, according to the artist, a combination of "porousness and strength, reflecting the inherent connectivity among beings."
In an adjacent permanent collection gallery, Caycedo will curate a selection of portraits and landscapes of/by women and nonbinary artists drawn from the Kemper Art Museum's collection. These artworks will be shown alongside her own My Feminine Lineage of Environmental Struggle \(2018\), a printed canvas banner depicting portraits of women environmental activists from across the world, many of whom have been killed, incarcerated, or prosecuted for defending the biodiversity of their territories. The dialogue created among these works reflects an intentional alignment central to Caycedo's practice, fostering connection while underscoring the vital relationship between feminism and environmentalism.
Concurrently, Caycedo will present a new public artwork commissioned by Counterpublic, a local public art triennial. For this commission Caycedo will produce a large-scale sculpture titled Fiesta de las Raices as part of her Root Portraits series.
Across this visually and materially compelling constellation of artworks, located inside the Kemper Art Museum and in the city of St. Louis, Caycedo asks us to reorient our relationship with the natural world by critically considering our connection to place, to what sustains us, and to what we can do to reciprocate.
Meredith Malone, the Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg Curator and senior curator at the Kemper Art Museum.