MASP — Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand presents Carolina Caycedo: confluences, on view from July 3. Bringing together photography, installation, video, performance, and drawing, the exhibition highlights the many relationships between rivers and communities, addressing environmental issues and forms of resistance. The exhibition takes its title from the new installation Confluences, created collaboratively during the People’s Summit held alongside the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém, Pará, and presented to the public for the first time in this exhibition. Following its presentation at MASP, the exhibition will travel to El Museo del Barrio in New York.

Born in London and raised in Colombia, Carolina Caycedo (United Kingdom, 1978) grew up on the banks of the Magdalena River, an experience that profoundly shaped her relationship with ecology and her artistic practice. One of Colombia’s most important waterways, the river has been deeply affected by dam construction, a recurring subject in the artist’s work, which explores the symbolic, social, and political dimensions of water.

Confluences was developed in dialogue with the International Movement of People Affected by Dams, Environmental Crimes, and the Climate Crisis during the People’s Summit held in the context of COP30. The installation brings together T-shirts, flags, and banners produced by participants in the gathering. The work evokes the idea of confluence as the meeting not only of waterways, but also of people, cultures, and forms of resistance, bringing together diverse experiences of struggle in defense of rivers and territories.

Curated by Isabella Rjeille, curator at MASP, the exhibition highlights a trajectory in Caycedo’s practice that begins with the denunciation of social and environmental injustices and moves toward creating a space for proposal, repair, and healing. Throughout her career, water has remained a central force and structuring element of her artistic practice. This interest is expressed, among other works, in the Cosmotarrayas [Cosmonets] series (2016–ongoing). Developed through the artist’s engagement with riverside communities, the sculptures are inspired by the way fishers hang their nets from tree trunks to dry. Composed of suspended artisanal fishing nets filled with objects collected by the artist, the Cosmotarrayas bring together stories, memories, and traces of the many forms of life that exist within and around rivers.

“Although denunciation remains present in her practice, Carolina Caycedo’s work has increasingly shifted toward a space of proposition and the affirmation of life. In doing so, the artist acknowledges the legacies of women, activists, and others who have led environmental causes, acknowledging their trajectories and contributions to alternative forms of ecological thinking in Latin America and around the world,” says curator Isabella Rjeille.

This movement can also be seen in My feminine lineage of struggle (2018–2019), a work from MASP’s collection that is included in the exhibition. Part of the Genealogy of Struggle series, the work reflects the artist’s interest in trajectories connected to social and environmental activism, bringing together an extensive group of drawn portraits of women activists from Brazil and other countries. On the reverse side of each drawing, Caycedo records the story of the portrayed figure, including Marielle Franco, Tuíra Kayapó, Ana Laide Barbosa, Anna Terra Yawalapiti, Dorothy Stang, and Maria do Carmo Silva D’Angelo.

As part of the exhibition’s program, Caycedo will perform Atarraya on Saturday, July 4, at MASP’s Free Span (Vão livre). The work brings together voices affected by water infrastructures such as dams and canalization projects. During the performance, one participant gives voice to these narratives while another repeatedly casts a fishing net into the space. At the end, the audience is invited to hold and extend the net collectively, in a gesture of solidarity with the communities and ecosystems evoked by the performance.

Carolina Caycedo: confluences is part of MASP’s annual program dedicated to Latin american histories. This year’s program also includes exhibitions by Damián Ortega, Santiago Yahuarcani, Claudia Alarcón & Silät, La Chola Poblete, Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, Colectivo Acciones de Arte, Sol Calero, Pablo Delano, Rosa Elena Curruchich, Manuel Herreros and Mateo Manaure, Jesús Soto, as well as an international group exhibition.