Artist Statement

Carolina Aranibar-Fernández

Through my work, I am interested in addressing concerns such as displacement, privatization of land, exploitation of natural resources, environmental issues, and the invisible exploited labor that supplies global trade. In my installations and objects, I interweave fabrics, oral storytelling, ceramics, and video, using hand making processes and materials drawn from both ancestral and contemporary crafts. I explore materials as a language, treating them as non-verbal stories. I allow materials like soil, sugar, metals, crude oil, and others to be the storytellers in my work.

My installations, objects, and performances are informed by research into the histories of resource extraction and the oppressive labor systems that have fueled the ideologies of colonization and capitalism, from slavery to mass incarceration. My practice examines visible and invisible borders, and the displacement of bodies across land and water as a result of the exploitation of resources and labor that corporate capitalism continues to profit from. I center oral histories, ancestral ways of knowledge and healing in my work, and seek to offer participatory experiences for the viewer.