
Simulacrum (Nagold River, Germany)
2015
Stretching nearly seven meters across cotton canvas, "Simulacrum (Nagold River, Germany)" confronts the viewer with the Nagold River rendered as photocollage, a medium that Caycedo deploys to expose the constructed, mediated nature of landscapes that may appear natural but are in fact deeply shaped by human intervention. The work belongs to Caycedo's sustained investigation into water as a site of political and ecological conflict, where rivers are dammed, redirected, and commodified under the logic of development and resource extraction. By fragmenting and reassembling photographic source material, the artist refuses the seamless, picturesque image of the river, insisting instead on rupture and artifice as honest registers of how contemporary society relates to waterways. Caycedo, whose practice spans performance, video, drawing, and installation, has built an internationally recognized body of work that centers on the rights of rivers and the communities whose lives are bound to them. The "Simulacrum" series positions rivers across different geographies within a shared conceptual frame, linking local environmental histories to global patterns of dispossession and control. The Nagold River, situated in southwestern Germany and long subject to engineering and regulation, becomes in Caycedo's hands a case study in the broader phenomenon of rivers remade to serve industrial and economic imperatives rather than ecosystems or peoples. Signed by the artist and presented on cotton canvas, this large-scale work commands significant spatial presence while remaining intimate in its photographic detail, making it equally compelling in institutional and private collection contexts. Instituto de Visión, the Bogotá-based gallery representing Caycedo, has championed her practice as it has grown in critical and market prominence, with works entering major museum collections across Latin America, North America, and Europe. Collectors acquiring this piece gain entry into one of contemporary art's most urgent and coherent bodies of work, one that asks fundamental questions about who controls water, and what is lost when rivers become resources.
- Medium
- Photocollage printed on cotton canvas
- Overall
- Signed
- Yes
- Spotted At
- Gallery · Instituto de Visión
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