Agua entre la metalurgia (Water in between metallurgy) is a solo exhibition by Carolina Aranibar-Fernández with curatorial mentorship from Alana Hernandez. The exhibition builds upon the artist’s ongoing practice that addresses the geopolitical concerns of exploitation. Through works that incorporate processes of etching, sewing, stitching, cutting, and printing, Aranibar-Fernández seeks to deconstruct complex movements of resources on a global scale.

Utilizing the language of maps, charts, and aerial topographies, Agua entre la metalurgia repositions seemingly neutral tools of knowledge and information that are often seeded with the biases of colonialism and imperialist power. Instead of rendering her works in pen and paper or vector and screen, Aranibar-Fernández constructs them with copper, sequins, silver thread, and embroidery, the latter repurposed from shawls worn by Aymara women in Bolivia, where she was born and raised. In materially referencing the dynamics of natural resource control and the invisible labor embedded in global trade, the works provoke a consideration of exploitation that simultaneously centers land, labor, and—crucially—people. “These works, at points disquieting in their glittering opulence,” writes exhibition mentor Alana Hernandez, “underscore the ongoing threat of colonization, genocide, and displacement faced by Indigenous populations.”

Agua entre la metalurgia is Aranibar-Fernández’s first solo exhibition in New York City, and comes on the heels of a residency at the Phoenix-based CALA Alliance. There, she expanded upon previous works that trace the flows of trade through water, exploring routes such as those that brought the luminescent fabric flowers of her source material from South China through the Philippines to Bolivia. While in Phoenix, she also began to take note of the historiographies of copper mining in Arizona, reflecting upon the similar impacts of its economic extractivism—forced migration, oppression, and loss—on populations across South America. Agua entre la metalurgia presents new works that result from this layered reflection, as Aranibar-Fernández traces active mining sites and etches them onto copper plates with acid, each forming a unique thumbprint of destruction. In witnessing them corrode with the passage of time, we are invited to consider a key question: what scars will we allow to be burned into the earth…and onto our memory?