News Release - Carolina Caycedo Video to Go on View in the Huntington Art Gallery

Apariciones/Apparitions (2018) reconceptualizes several iconic Huntington spaces, including the Huntingtons' former residence, through Afro-Latinx and indigenous spiritual practices and dance.

On view in the Huntington Art Gallery, Aug. 17, 2019–Feb. 10, 2020

SAN MARINO, Calif.— A video work by acclaimed Los Angeles artist Carolina Caycedo that reconceptualizes several iconic Huntington spaces through Afro-Latinx and indigenous spiritual practices and dance will go on view Aug. 17, 2019, through Feb. 10, 2020, in the historic Huntington Art Gallery, the Huntingtons' former residence, which is one of the settings in the piece. Apariciones /Apparitions debuted in 2018 at The Huntington as part of the institution's contemporary arts initiative called "/five," when The Huntington and the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) at East Los Angeles College invited Caycedo to create work in response to The Huntington's collections. This month, with the support of the The Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation, The Huntington purchased the video jointly with VPAM, where it is currently on view.

The nine-and-a-half-minute Apariciones/Apparitions features ghost-like dancers inhabiting The Huntington in unconventional ways. Choreographed by dance artist Marina Magalhães and shot by videographer David de Rozas, the piece is centered on brown, black, and queer bodies haunting The Huntington’s iconic and traditional spaces—such as the great double staircase of the Huntington Art Gallery, the sweeping sculpture-lined North Vista lawn, and the rare book reading room in the Library building—in sensuous movements informed by the spiritual rituals of an Afro-Brazilian deity. In much of the powerful, captivating piece, the dancers look directly at the camera. “The gaze of the dancers, or phantoms, holds the viewer accountable,” said Caycedo, something that she feels is too often missing from history and art.

“We are always eager for people to engage in meaningful ways with our collections,” said Catherine Hess, chief curator of European art, who organized the acquisition and installation, “and Carolina Caycedo is a superbly astute artist who trained her eye on this place with stunning results. Apariciones /Apparitions is an exquisite and relevant—even provocative—work. We are deeply indebted to the Berman Foundation for making this possible.”

In the video, dancers embody past entities returning to the earthly realm. Caycedo worked with Magalhães to develop gestures inspired by the Candomblé religion and the goddess Oxúm, a deity of water, pleasure, fertility, and sexuality. Dancers appear dressed in Oxúm’s signature color of deep gold and perform such rituals of labor as tilling land or washing gold in a river. The figures inhabit historically white spaces in evocative, unconventional ways, approaching the collections as sites for ritual, enjoyment, and divination.