Caleb Duarte creates temporary installations using construction-type frameworks such as beds of dirt, cement, and objects suggesting basic shelter; these installations become sites for performance as interpretations of his community collaborations. Through the use of various labor equipment and raw earth, Duarte questions the laws and institutions set in place that claim to provide sanctuary for Brown bodies—when in fact, these laws and institutional structures have been perpetrators of violence, displacement, and genocide.

Duarte has created works and community performances in India, Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, and the United States. He has exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Oakland Museum of California, Vincent Price Art Museum in Los Angeles, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and at the Red Dot Art Fair in New York. Duarte is the co-founder of EDELO, a Spanish acronym for (Where the United Nations Used To Be). EDELO was a house of art in movement and an international artist residency of diverse practices in Chiapas, Mexico. The project challenged the traditional artist residency in that it placed residents alongside rural autonomous indigenous communities that have been using performance, theater, poetry, and a rich visual culture to demand drastic social, political, and economic change.