Nuestro Cosmos
Carolina Caycedo

COMPLETION DATE
2024 

LOCATION
George Bush Intercontinental Airport, D-West Pier
2800 N Terminal Rd
Houston, TX 77032

District B 

CLIENT
City of Houston

SPONSORING DEPARTMENT
Houston Airport System

PROJECT BUDGET
$417.000.00

Photo: Shau Lin Hon, Slyworks Photography 2024

Carolina CaycedoNuestro Cosmos

Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo creates captivating installations utilizing a material familiar to the Texas Gulf Coast region – the fishing net. This site-specific installation, titled Nuestro Cosmos (Our Cosmos) is an artwork which features a series of hand-dyed net sculptures hung in an arrangement to reference the sun and the phases of the lunar cycle. At its heart, a glowing yellow and red star anchors the artwork and is surrounded by an array of blue, purple, pink, and green suspended sculptures representing the various phases of the moon.

In creating this artwork, the artist took inspiration from Houston’s “Space City” moniker, by the gulf coast, and the rivers and bayous that weave through the landscape in the region. Observed from multiple vantage points by arriving and departing passengers, the shape and unified color palette create a multi-layered visual experience that can be appreciated both up close and afar.

  • HAA oversaw the artist selection, design, fabrication, and installation process for this artwork. Working diligently with sponsoring city departments, Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, and the selected artists, HAA created and publicized the opportunity, coordinated the panel process, managed artist communications, and monitored on-site installation. Recommendation reports were submitted at the conclusion of Artist Selection and Design phases, and a robust closeout report was provided upon project completion detailing project summary and ongoing maintenance requirements.  

  • The Houston Airport System (HAS) is the City of Houston’s Department of Aviation, comprised of George Bush Intercontinental Airport, William P. Hobby Airport, and Ellington Airport/Houston Spaceport. The System served 54 million passengers in 2022 and nearly 60 million in 2019. HAS positions Houston as the international passenger and cargo gateway to the South-Central United States and as a primary gateway to Latin America. It contributed $36.4 billion to the local economy in 2019 and is responsible for creating 190,000 jobs.

  • This project was funded through Houston’s Civic Art Ordinance, which requires 1.75% of the budget for eligible City-funded construction projects to be spent on integrating artwork and artists' ideas in public spaces and conserving the City of Houston’s Civic Art Collection. The Houston Arts Alliance administers the civic art program for the City of Houston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. 

  • ARTS REPRESENTATIVES/PANELISTS

    Alison de Lima Greene, Isabel Brown Wilson Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

    Melanie K. Brown, Division Manager for Customer Service, George Bush Intercontinental Airport

    Andrew Czobor, Assistant Director, Terminal Management, Terminal D, George Bush Intercontinental Airport

    Felicia Kizzie, Secretary, Heather Ridge Village Homeowners Association

    Naiomy Guerrero, Graduate Center Teaching Fellow, The City College at The City University of New York

    Nicole Mullen, Curator of Exhibitions at SFO Museum at the San Francisco International Airport

    Nominating Committee

    Christian Wurst, Assistant Curator of Exhibitions at the Sheldon Museum of Art

    Marcela Guerrero, Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art

    Mari Carmen Ramirez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

    Rita Gonzalez, Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Artist Bio

Carolina Caycedo (London, 1978) is a Colombian multidisciplinary artist living in Los Angeles. Her immense geographic photographs, lively artist’s books, hanging sculptures, performances, films, and installations are not merely art objects but gateways into larger discussions about how we treat each other and the world around us. Through her studio practice and fieldwork with communities impacted by large-scale infrastructure and other extraction projects, she invites viewers to consider the unsustainable pace of growth under capitalism and how we might embrace resistance and solidarity. Process and participation are central to Caycedo’s practice; she contributes to the reconstruction of environmental and historical memory as a fundamental space for climate and social justice. Informed by Indigenous and feminist epistemologies, she confronts the role of the colonial gaze in the privatization and dispossession of land and water. Caycedo conjures common goods and collective bodies in what she refers to as Geochoreographies, to examine the environmental, economic, social and spiritual impacts of extractivist industries, raising questions about the future of our shared resources, and the parameters of a Fair Transition.

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