Single-channel video installation, color, sound
2 min 59 sec
Overall dimensions variable
Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary for st_age


Eduardo Navarro investigates different ways of transforming our senses in order to have a new understanding of our world. His works range from large scale sculptures to actions and participatory installations that investigate empathy and contemplation. 

Octo-Durga sees a post big-bang underwater Cephalopod dancer emerge from the depths of the oceans on one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa. Summoning a photo-sonic manifestation of an indigenous ancient-Indian goddess, one of the initiators of the primary multiverse, Octo-Durga makes and unmakes self and unself through poetry, gestures, and sound. 

Created together with Indian Artists BaRiya (Riya Raagini and Pratyush Pushkar) this series invites the viewer to dive into a state of mind that connects with the underwater world. Sound and meditation are interwoven with new forms of living based on solidarity and communiality. 
This is a project that aims to reshape the present by imagining alternative futures. Life Below Water (SDG goal 14) surrounds Navarro’s potential beings, as they explore Gender Equality (goal 5) and seek Good Health and Well-Being (goal 3). 

This project challenges the obsolete dualities of humanity and nature, of earth and mind, of technology and culture, to acknowledge, in a sci-fi way, the vast changes and disruptions taking place in the planet’s oceans. It is framed under The St*age topic Thinking From and Within the Oceans.

Eduardo Navarro investigates different ways of transforming our senses in order to have a new understanding of our world. His works range from large scale sculptures to actions and participatory installations that investigate empathy and contemplation. His recent solo exhibitions include: In Collaboration with the Sun, Mac Niteroi, Rio, Brazil(2019), Instant Weather Prediction, PIVO, São Paulo, Brazil (2019), Into Ourselves, The Drawing Center, New York, US/ DER TANK, Basel, Switzerland (2017/18), OCTOPIA, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2016); We Who Spin Around You, The High Line Art, New York, USA (2016). His work has also been included in group show such as: Mercosul Biennial (2009 and 2013); the Bienal de São Paulo (2010 and 2016); ‘Surround Audience: The New Museum Triennial’, the New Museum, New York (2015); the Sharjah Biennial (2015); ‘La era metabolica’ Malba, Buenos Aires (2015); and ‘Metamorfoses’ at the Castello de Rivoli, Turin, Italy (2018).


Formed by Pratyush Pushkar and Riya Raagini, BaRiya is a transdisciplinary duo from New Delhi, India, that works across art, sound design, poetry, and writing. Sincere atheists, and avid Quantum speed readers, Pushkar and Raagini understand art as an organ to dilute and dwell on the marginalized remains of spirituality, to create a consensus with nature, to meditate through the gender spectrum, and to probe quantum compulsions, while intimately acknowledging the binary and racial barriers that hinder an inventive spiritual evolution. BaRiya spirals transcendentally to-and-fro photography, visual poetry, electro-acoustic soundscaping, multimedia translation, and philosophy.
In 2020 BaRiya edited and compiled, one of the first global queer anthology in the Hindi language, with contributions from artists and intellectuals including Sunil Gupta, Charan Singh, and Ruth Vanita. Pushkar and Raagini have also recently translated and elaborated the work by Sophia Parnok, Baruch Spinoza, Gi Hyeong-do, Friedrich Schiller, Gertrude Stein, Paul B. Preciado, and others. They released a solo EP in 2020, and are currently working on a new album incorporating the philosophy of quantum mechanics, which will sensorially translate the mutual relations of the acoustic and the quantum world within a context of varied poetic and spiritual upgradation.