Carolina Caycedo: Salute of the Whales

On the eve of the 2026 Spring Festival, February 12, the Museum of Art Pudong (MAP) marks the grand opening of the contemporary art commission Carolina Caycedo: Salute of the Whales. As a significant milestone within the long-standing collaboration between MAP and Tate, this exhibition represents the global premiere of a new work specifically designed for MAP’s Hall X. It is also the largest-scale work in the artist’s career to date.

Modeled after two living humpback whales, "Batman" and "Aria," this monumental installation recreates the whales at life size. Their epic stories are presented in MAP's Hall X, in an immersive exhibition that merges contemporary issues such as marine ecology, ocean health, and interspecies coexistence.

Carolina Caycedo: Salute of the Whales is co-organized by the Museum of Art Pudong and Tate, and produced by Shanghai Lujiazui Development (Group) Company Limited.

Responding to Marine Ecology Through "Portraiture": Whales as Subjects in Contemporary Art

"Aria" and "Batman," are presented in MAP's Hall X—an iconic space rising 34 meters across five floors of the museum, offering multiple vantage points. Their colossal size and intricate details prompt us to rethink our interspecies relationships to whales and marine life.

Hall X as an Immersive Ocean: A Sensory Experience of Sound, Light, and Breath

Caycedo has divided the space of Hall X with a map that centers the world's seas rather than the land, reversing our usual perspective. Traced with humpback whale migration routes, the wall-to-wall printed fabric becomes a surface through which the whales dive, offering the audience encounters with the whales from above and below the ocean.