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otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua

5 April – 2 November 2025

Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Installation view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi

Marking the 10th anniversary of its curatorial multi-year fellowship program The Current, TBA21–Academy presents otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves]. Led by Dominican curator Yina Jiménez Suriel, the exhibition brings together newly commissioned works by Nadia Huggins and Tessa Mars. Spanning site-specific video and sound installations, sculpture and large-scale paintings, the exhibition inhabits the historic former church of San Lorenzo.

 

The Ocean is a common space between the different embryonic horizons that seek to guarantee life on our planet today. While the interconnectedness that the Ocean offers is often perceived through its biological implications, the Ocean is also a common ground for contemporary emancipatory processes within the human species—processes that invariably extend to non-human forms of life. At the heart of these emancipatory movements lies an urgent imperative: to transcend the landbound perspective that has historically shaped and constrained both our sensory system and our modes of knowledge production. The symbolic and material structures we have inherited are anchored in a notion of the binary and the stable, and the Oceanic perspective offers an alternative framework that enables the formation of life through perpetual motion.

 

Within the framework of the long-term research project by Jiménez Suriel la historia de las montañas [the history of the mountains], the following strategies and tools have been identified: repetition, fugue, improvisation~freestyle, transmutation, oneiric processes, and flotation. Among these, in the expanse of planetary skin known as the Caribbean tectonic plate, improvisation~freestyle emerges as particularly significant, spanning life from the highest terrestrial peaks to the other mountains, adrift beneath the waves. For this reason, The Current IV has dedicated three years to its study and application.
 

The exhibition otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves] features newly commissioned works by artists Nadia Huggins and Tessa Mars, both of whom explore and facilitate engagement with improvisation~freestyle as a means of transcending landbound perspectives, reimagining systems of sustenance, and interrogating entrenched power structures.

CURATOR
Yina Jiménez Suriel
 
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Nadia Huggins was born in Trinidad and Tobago and grew up in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where she is currently based. A self taught artist, she works in photography and, since 2010, has built a body of images that are characterized by her observation of and interest in the everyday. Her work merges documentary and conceptual practices, which explore ecology, belonging, identity, and memory through a contemporary approach focused on re-presenting Caribbean landscapes and the sea. Huggins'photographs have been exhibited in group shows in Canada, US, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados, Ethiopia, Guadeloupe, France, and the Dominican Republic. She has had solo shows in US at KJCC/NYU, NYC and at The Betsy Hotel, Miami, and in Europe in London and at Now Gallery. Her work forms part of the collection of The Wedge Collection (Toronto, Canada), The National Gallery of Jamaica (Kingston), and The Art Museum of the Americas (Washington DC, USA).

Tessa Mars is a Haitian visual artist who explores gender, landscape, migration, and spirituality in relation to Haitian history. Working primarily in painting and papier maché, the artist takes distance from colonial narratives to reconnect to a Haitian perspective of the world and embrace other forms of collective belonging. Mars received a BFA from Rennes 2 University in France in 2006 and is now based in Haiti and San Juan Puerto Rico. She has had solo exhibitions at Le Centre d’Art and the French Institute in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and has participated in collective exhibitions at Tiwani Gallery, London, UK; Denver Art Museum, CO; Art Africa Miami, FL; Ateliers ’89, Oranjestad, Aruba; Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien, Port-au-Prince, Haiti; 30th International Symposium of Contemporary Art of Baie-Saint-Paul, Canada; Alice Yard, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; and Cité international des arts, Paris, France. Tessa Mars was part of the first Haitian pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale.
 
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