Works from st_age, TBA21’s platform for digital productions, travels to the City Museum of Ljubljana to be part of When in Doubt Go to a Museum

When in Doubt, Go to a Museum 
St_age, TBA21’s platform for digital productions, travels to the City Museum of Ljubljana to be part of When in Doubt, Go to a Museum, an exhibition guest curated by Tevž Logar. 
26. 1. 2021–16. 5. 2021

The City Museum of Ljubljana bets on a bricolage of modern and contemporary artistic approaches to showcase how art collecting can help facilitate Slovenia's cultural projects. To achieve this feat, they have invited Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection (TBA21), Collection Laurent Fiévet, Lah Contemporary, Ovidiu Sandor Collection, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo to participate in the exhibition When in Doubt, Go to a Museum opening January 26th.  

The artworks lent by the TBA21 collection were part of How to Tread Lightly. st_age expanded, an exhibition,curated by Soledad Gutiérrez. It was a physical incarnation of the first season of st_age, our online commissions initiative that reframes the challenges raised during the Covid-19 crisis. The five projects traveling to Ljubljana urge for ecological transformation and social responsibility, inviting us to imagine possible futures based on environmental concerns and ancestral forms of knowledge. 

Saudi-Palestinian artist Dana Awartani’s Come, Let me Heal your Wounds (2020) is an installation composed of medicinally-dyed and hand embroiled silk that explores the geometrical principles of Islamic arts. It is a plea to safeguard ancient civilizations in the Arab world, to rejoice in the knowledge of healing plants, and to respect the venerable tradition of revering objects. 

Through the lens of pre-colonial folktales and animistic rituals, the film An Invocation to the Earth (2020), produced by NTU CCA Singapore and TBA21, speaks to the plight of those who strive to protect ecosystems. Director Yeo Siew Hua was inspired by a traditional Buddhist and Taoist, the Hungry Ghost Festival, and honors Southeast Asia's fallen environmental defenders. 
The video poem Geometry of the Centre (2020) by Costa Rican artist Christian Salablanca Díaz examines the cultural relations of violent systems. His interdisciplinary approach focuses on how violence conditions history, society, and politics. This project was commissioned and produced by FLORA arts+nature and TBA21. 

Eduardo Navarro's art investigates different ways of transforming our senses to create new understandings of our world. Octo-Durga is a three-chapter animation that simultaneously imagines a primordial path and an alternative future. Created together with Indian artists BaRiya (Riya Raagini and Pratyush Pushkar), Navarro's animation invites us to dive into a state of mind that connects with an underwater world. 

Produced by TBA21-Academy and curated by composer and artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff, freq_wave encompasses contributions from 84 sound artists, composers, and musicians in an interactive installation around oceanic creativity. It spans the seven seas to show how art and culture can make the complexities of marine degradation audible, bringing attention to the delicate soundscapes of the sea.

When in Doubt, Go to a Museum, opens January 26th inthe City Museum of Ljubljana’s. TBA21 is delighted that works from the collection are part of this exhibition.