Carolina Caycedo: Growing Deep Roots

The Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis presents Carolina Caycedo: Growing Deep Roots, a solo exhibition of new and recent work by the Los Angeles–based Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo.

Drawing on environmental justice frameworks, traditional knowledge systems, and ecofeminism, Caycedo’s practice challenges dominant conceptions of nature as a resource to be exploited, instead positioning ecosystems as living networks to which we are deeply accountable. The exhibition brings together works that address the interrelated issues of water and land stewardship and just energy transition, highlighting Caycedo’s continued engagement with rivers and the socio-ecological impacts of extractive, profit-driven expansion, alongside works that imagine more reciprocal futures.

In her Plant Portraits series (2021–ongoing), Caycedo reconfigures scientific botanical illustrations, merging plant and human anatomy. In calling them “portraits,” Caycedo reorients the Western portraiture tradition, presenting plants as subjects with agency while underscoring interdependence across species. The artist expands this approach in her Root Portraits (2026–ongoing), which emphasize the importance of root-to-soil interactions. Focusing on perennial prairie grasses and grains that improve soil health, mitigate climate change, and boost biodiversity, the series includes Prairie Root Portrait, a large, three-part relief print created at WashU’s Island Press in March 2026 that depicts the roots of six Midwestern prairie grass species. Concurrently, Caycedo will present a related work, Fiesta de las Raíces, a new commission for Counterpublic 2026: Coyote Time, a triennial exhibition featuring fifty new commissions throughout the St. Louis region.

The ideas of Growing Deep Roots further expand through a range of works that narrate the impact of resource extraction and industrial infrastructures on both bodies of water and human bodies. Caycedo’s Mineral Intensive drawings (2023–ongoing) collage together images of extractive landscapes that include scenes of labor. The mural Elwha’s Healing (2022/2026) depicts the recovery of the Elwha River in the Pacific Northwest following the removal of two hydroelectric dams after decades of Native activism, and the subsequent return of salmon populations. Celestial Autonomy, the Dance of Big Dipper and North Star (2023), part of Caycedo’s long-running series of hanging net sculptures, Cosmotarrayas, connects her studio practice with community involvement including materials sourced from fishing communities in Anchorage, Alaska, and references to Indigenous astronomical knowledge.

As part of Growing Deep Roots, Caycedo will curate a selection of portraits and landscapes by women and nonbinary artists from the Museum’s permanent collection, including works by Rebecca Belmore, Rivane Neuenschwander, and Rose B. Simpson. These will be presented in dialogue with her My Feminine Lineage of Environmental Struggle: Expansion I (2019), a printed canvas banner depicting more than 140 women environmentalists, many of whom have faced violence, incarceration, or persecution. The exhibition also includes botanical specimens selected by Caycedo from the Herbarium at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

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. 

Carolina Caycedo: Growing Deep Roots is curated by Meredith Malone, the Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg Curator and senior curator at the Kemper Art Museum.

The exhibition is made possible by the leadership support of the William T. Kemper Foundation. All exhibitions at the Kemper Art Museum are supported by members of the Director’s Circle, with major annual support provided by Emily and Teddy Greenspan and additional generous annual support from Michael Forman and Jennifer Rice, Julie Kemper Foyer, Joanne Gold and Andrew Stern, David and Dorothy Kemper, Ron and Pamela Mass, Kim and Bruce Olson, and Chrissy Taylor and Lee Broughton. Further support is provided by the Hortense Lewin Art Fund, the Ken and Nancy Kranzberg Fund, and members of the Kemper Art Museum.