08/21/2026
Experience artists in the Venice Biennale here Victoria! Visit the AGGV to find the work of two artists participating in The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys: Carolina Caycedo and Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka.
🔹Smooth prints are left on the water's surface, indentations of a presence that was there gulping in a breath of air but has now submerged again. Lines are traced, mapping these moments of travel and brief indentations on the water of the meandering lives of whales across the Pacific Ocean. In Carolina Caycedo's Our Blue Corridors, dark blue fills the majority of the surface that is encircled with shapes of land with light lines that trace its edges. Across this vast water body, we see delicate depictions of whales as they move through their worlds.
Carolina Caycedo is a Colombian artist born in London and living in Los Angeles. Her murals, books, performances, films, photo-collages, hanging sculptures and installations are gateways into larger discussions about how we treat each other and the world around us. Engaging with issues of water and land stewardship, food sovereignty, and Fair Energy Transition, she inquires into ways of being on Earth that foster sustaining and caring relationships with the natural and built environments. (From the artist's website)
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🔹A boulder, formed by the delicate shaping of paper, seems to hover weightlessly above the ground. Upon this shape emerge what appear to be topographical lines, the wistful flows of water, or perhaps the sides of a rock face. The intricate yet playful way the lines chisel across the surface, too, suggest a lightness or a moment of looking at a landscape that has been informed by water.
Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka is Japanese-Canadian artist who brings a poetic framing to her work through deeply collaborative practice that works alongside people, land, water, and other natural elements. Her work highlights a form of togetherness through its poetic and references to land and water and through the rigorous and relational process of making the washi paper which has come through her long-term relationship with a family of washi makers in Kochi, japan. As she states, her work is a celebration of these relationships and the "personal and collective experiences of struggle, resilience, connection, and radical joy."
These artworks are featured in the AGGV exhibition, As waters merge – swaying waves beckoning us closer, Guest-Curated by Camille Georgeson-Usher with Jazmine Andrew, Curatorial Assistant. This exhibition runs until October 4, 2026.
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Image credits:
1. Installation view of As waters merge – swaying waves beckoning us closer, photo by Kyra Kordoski, courtesy of the AGGV.
2,3. Carolina Caycedo, Our Blue Corridors, 2025, wood, flashe paint, acrylic paint, coloured pencil. Courtesy of the Artist. photo by Kyra Kordoski, courtesy of the AGGV.
Carolina Caycedo, Our Blue Corridors (detail), 2025, wood, flashe paint, acrylic paint, coloured pencil, 183 x 335 cm. Photo by Paul Salveson, courtesy of the Artist and Commonwealth and Council.
5,6,7. Alexa Hatanaka, On the Land, 2019, hand-carved and hand-printed linocut on washi from Kashiki Seishi, stretch-strengthened and sewn. Collection of John Donald. Photos by Kyra Kordoski, courtesy of the AGGV.
