Mentor Statement

Alana Hernandez

I first met Carolina Aranibar-Fernández in Phoenix when she was in residency at CALA Alliance as our first regional resident. Carolina proposed a project related to mapping the displacement of bodies and resources across geographies, particularly in South America and non-Western contexts. She painstakingly hand-sewed black beads and fishing line onto opaque tulle, which hung from copper pipes. That project, in a similar vein to this presentation at CUE, mapped trading routes and movements across land and water.

For Agua entre la metalurgia, Carolina’s first solo exhibition in New York City, the Bolivian-born multidisciplinary artist addresses urgent geopolitical concerns related to the extraction and exploitation of labor, and uncovers the historical origins of these contemporary practices. The artist charts the flows of capital through cartographic renderings of maritime trade, cash crops, and industrial metals across the expansive bodies of water, often referencing the Indigenous bodies that move it.

Carolina has aptly conceived this exhibition as ongoing research into disrupting the cartographies of extracted resources, creating several new works that detail how contemporary markets insidiously mask historical oppression. Taking a myriad of forms, her project at CUE employs hand-sewn or embroidered maps, etched copper plates, and prints that each reference the merciless mining and extraction of the earth.

These works, at points disquieting in their glittering opulence, underscore the ongoing threat of colonization, genocide, and displacement faced by Indigenous populations. Carolina’s unwavering interest in exposing the ongoing extraction happening to our environment implores us as visitors to learn and engage with these treacherous, often-hidden histories. The works on view chart these various displacements, mapping a global web of interconnection and responsibility from Phoenix to New York, to Bolivia and beyond.