The Current IV: Caribbean

Guatemala
 

"otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua”
(other mountains, adrift beneath the waves)
 

Yina Jiménez Suriel is curator and researcher with a master’s degree in visual studies. Her practice is an ongoing investigation into contemporary emancipatory processes and the construction of imaginations. She is the TBA21–Academy The Current IV Curatorial Fellow, a three years (2023–2025) research project entitled otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua. She is Adjunct Curator for the 14th Bienal do Mercosul (2024) and Associate Editor of the magazine Contemporary And (C&) for Latin America and the Caribbean. Among the exhibitions she has curated are: Vehículos. Una revisión (2018) at Casa Quien (Dominican Republic); one month after being known in that island (2020) at the Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger (Switzerland) curated with the artist Pablo Guardiola and co-produced by Caribbean Art Initiative; and the first chapter of the research project de montañas submarinas el fuego hace islas (2022) at Pivô (Brazil) co-produced with Kadist and took place between São Paulo and Santo Domingo. Yina is part of the curatorial team for the section Opening at ArcoMadrid for the editions of 2023 and 2024. Yina lives and works from the Dominican Republic.


FELLOWS:

Nadia Huggins is a self-taught visual artist who works primarily with photography. In 2011, Huggins co-founded the visual arts publication ARC Magazine. Her photography was awarded the Festival Caribéen de l'image du Mémorial ACTe Jury Prize in Guadeloupe in 2015, and has been exhibited regionally and internationally. Some of her more notable exhibitions have been: Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, Museum of Latin American Art, California, USA, Jamaica Biennial, at the National Gallery in Kingston, Jamaica, 2017: Small Axe: Caribbean Queer Visualities in Belfast, U.K. in 2016 and Glasgow, U.K. in 2016: Fighting the Currents at Centro de La Imagen, Dominican Republic, 2016. She currently resides in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Monique Johnson is an Earth scientist exploring the impacts of geological hazards in the Eastern Caribbean, including the barriers and capacities for disaster risk reduction in Caribbean Societies. Johnson holds a BSc. in Geology, MSc. in Coastal Engineering and Post Graduate Diploma in the Assessment of Geological and Climate-related Risk. She has spent the last 15 years supporting communities living with geo-hazards in the Caribbean through projects with regional development agencies and collaborators towards the implementation of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies. Her focus has also been on improving science communication, building community engagement and participation. Johnson is currently exploring interdisciplinary and participatory methods to improve understanding of how Afro-indigenous communities navigate risk at the intersection of the socio-political, historical, geological and ecological landscape.

Tessa Mars is a Haitian visual artist born and raised in Port-au-Prince. She completed a Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts at Rennes 2 University in France in 2006, after which she returned to live and work in Haiti. Mars's work has been shown recently in the exhibitions Who Tells a Tale Adds a Tail (2022) at the Denver Art Museum, one month after being known in that island (2020) at the Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger and in her solo show Île modèle - Manman zile - Island template (2019) with le Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince. Mars is an alumna of the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten (2020-2022) and now resides in the Netherlands. In her practice, Mars proposes storytelling and Image-making as transformative strategies for survival, resistance, empowerment and healing. Through her paintings and papier maché pieces, Mars investigates gender, History, and traditions, seeking to reconnect with a Haitian perspective of the world and visions of more serene possible futures.

Afropean philosopher and artist Dénètem Touam Bona tries to think about the contemporary world from the historical and utopian experience of «marronnage». DTB is author of several essays; Cosmopoéticas do Refugio (Cultura e Barbaria, 2020), Sagesse des lianes (Post Éditions, 2021), Fugitive, Where Are You Running? (Polity Press, 2023) DTB is regularly involved in creative projects such as La sagesse des lianes, an Afrodiasporic exhibition bringing together 20 artists at the Centre International d'art et du Paysage de Vassivière, in 2021. Also on Vassivière Island, in 2022 he imagined Spectrographies, contes de l'île étoilée, a collaborative work aimed at celebrating the memory of the struggles of the colonized. In March 2023, he was responsible for the dramaturgy of Louisa Marajo's immersive exhibition An dlo sargas viré! (Atrium, scène nationale de Martinique), focusing on the proliferation of sargassum and the issues involved.


OTHER PARTICIPANTS:

Ayumi Anzai Gallagher is an international private Wellbeing Director who travels the world leading private practices, retreats and events. Weaving together modern-day research-based techniques with traditional spiritual practices, Ayumi creates bespoke offerings designed to guide individuals to the fullest version of them Selves. Through yoga, dance, meditation, journaling, breathwork and plant medicine Ayumi offers experiences tailored to unlock and illuminate the divine essence within us all.


REPRESENTING TBA21:

Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza is an internationally recognized philanthropist, collector, and producer. In 2002, Francesca founded TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, a leading international art and advocacy foundation. In  2019, Francesca moved the activities of TBA21 to Madrid, Spain. Upon the invitation of the Minister of Culture of Spain, she inaugurated a series of exhibitions from her collection at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, representing the fourth generation contributing to the National Museum in the most successful public/private cooperation ever to be undertaken in Spain. The works in the TBA21 Collection testify to the artistic and ecological ethos of working with artists toward new forms of production, action, inquiry, and environmental conservation. TBA21 has since commissioned over 200 works and presents a new commission once a year at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. In 2022, the 20th anniversary year of the foundation, a new situated project was launched in a three-year partnership with the City of Córdoba, which encompasses an array of exhibitions created from the collection, as well as residencies, performances, and educational programs at C3A Córdoba and in public space.

Markus Reymann is Co-director of TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. He conceived and built TBA21–Academy as the foundation’s research center for fostering a deeper relationship with the Ocean and other bodies of water by working as an incubator for collaborative inquiry, artistic production, and environmental advocacy. For more than a decade, the Academy has catalyzed new forms of knowledge emerging from exchanges between art, science, policy, and conservation. Its situated research and practice are shared with the public in Ocean Space, located since 2019 in the Church of San Lorenzo in Venice. Its digital counterpart, Ocean-Archive.org, is a user-based platform in the making, conceived as a storytelling and pedagogical tool, and framework for collaborative research.Reymann also serves as Chair of Alligator Head Foundation, the scientific partner of TBA21–Academy. Alligator Head Foundation established and maintains the East Portland Fish Sanctuary and oversees a marine wet laboratory in Jamaica. Based in Venice, Reymann has presented on art and the oceans at conferences internationally and represents TBA21–Academy in the Mission Healthy Oceans Board as an officially endorsed Member of UNESCO’s Decade of Ocean Science and as an observer at the International Seabed Authority.
 

Maya Juracán is a curator and activist. As an educator, she was interested in using art as a tool to change traditional historical narratives; she studied language and literature, social sciences, contemporary art and cultural management. She curated the "21 Paiz Art Biennial" with Gerardo Mosquera, participated in the pedagogical plan of the FEMSA Biennial in Mexico, and co-created the collective of feminist curators "La Revuelta", which theorizes and practices feminist curatorship. She is currently a professor of Contemporary Art History at the Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala and directs the Arte Paiz collection, which she curates with a critical eye.

Museo del Mundo was established in 2016 as a virtual museum dedicated to researching, documenting, exhibiting, educating and showcasing various artistic practices, with special attention to artisanal expressions from around the world. Through a collaborative network of contributors, they aim to serve as a platform for promoting artistic manifestations linked to local resistance movements, encompassing music, fashion, photography, illustration, muralism, audiovisuals and design.

The Paiz Foundation for Education and Culture is a family foundation committed to the development and transformation of Guatemalan society through educational, cultural, and artistic programs. As a non-profit entity, they have dedicated themselves for more than forty years to supporting the development of education and culture in Guatemala with the conviction that art is an essential tool for social development.

The Paiz Art Biennial, founded in 1978, is a manifestation of this commitment. Born as a cultural project of the Paiz Foundation, it serves as a platform for the exhibition, creation, and dissemination of local artistic production and with the inclusion of international participation, this Biennial allowed Guatemala to connect with the international art world. The XXIII Paiz Art Biennial is curated by Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig and Juan Canela and is titled Bebí palabras sumergidas en sueños [I drank words submerged in dreams] after a verse by writer and poet Maya Cú. 
 

July 8
Hike to the Pacaya Volcano
Curator and activist Maya Juracán and documentary filmmaker and hiker Julián Martínez guided the fellows on a hiking tour through the Pacaya volcano with the aim of reflecting on the territory and the ancestral bodies that have inhabited it. In addition, the group had a chance to savor a meal prepared by Guatemalan chef Juan Melgar, departing from his project Amano Casa. 

July 9–13
Residency at Museo del Mundo, Livingston​
TBA21–Academy was hosted by Museo del Mundo, an institution dedicated to research about the Garifuna culture, for a short residency. A trip through Río Dulce, conversations, screenings and workshops on Garifuna language, music, dance and percussion were co-organized with Izabel Bermudez and Camila Caris, Museo del Mundo's co-founder.  

July 14
4–7 pm CST 
Centro Cultural de España en Guatemala
(public event)

nos encontramos a la salida de un volcán [we are meeting at the mouth of a volcano]

This performative discussion aimed to foster a moment of togetherness for curators, artists, researchers, and fellow practitioners to share their common influences and inquiry-led practices; to facilitate a meaningful exchange of ideas, experiences and perspectives and to acknowledge the bodies that gestate and nourish the different projects presented throughout this program.

Nos encontramos a la salida de un volcán was led by Yina Jiménez Suriel, curatorial fellow of TBA21–Academy The Current IV, Caribbean, and Juan Canela and Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig, curators of the XXIII Paiz Art Biennial.

This activity was jointly organized by TBA21–Academy and Paiz Foundation for Education and Culture

For more information, please visit: bienaldeartepaiz.org
 

The Current IV: Caribbean: "otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua" (other mountains, adrift beneath the waves)

Curated by Yina Jiménez Suriel, The Current IV, 2023–2025, intends to contribute to the emancipatory processes in the region that have sought to bring its inhabitants closer to the Ocean and that began in the high mountains above sea level. The project will focus on identifying, studying, and spreading the knowledge of the aesthetic strategies and tools generated from the Maroon experience in the Caribbean through the production of aesthetic thought, based on the premise that this approach will bring us closer to inhabiting the mountains that are below the level of the Caribbean Sea, as they were aesthetic practices that sought to reconcile the human body with the constant movement — the Ocean.