Marking the beginning of the 2026 Ocean Space exhibition season, TBA21–Academy presents Tide of Returns, an exhibition running from March 28 until October 11 based on the artistic-research of the Repatriates Collective, which is formed by artists from Australia’s Pacific North, South and West Africa, Europe, and Latin America.

Tide of Returns explores the role of art and water in shaping the processes of repatriation through the work of an artist collective, Indigenous communities, and filmmakers.

The exhibition sees both wings of the former Church of San Lorenzo come alive with newly commissioned multimedia works. In the west wing, the Repatriates Collective welcomes viewers into an immersive installation combining sand, thousands of characters made of shell and textile, video and sound. Sand from Noeleen Lalara’s land anchors the work, with a vast dune transformed into a living landscape of totems, clans, and songlines. Indigenous dolls made at the Anindilyakwa art center and Laimi Kakololo become a chorus of ancestral messengers, acting as vessels of memory and continuity. These characters are brought to life in film and the installation is saturated in songs that carry wisdom across water, bridging two communities across continents, in a sound composition by Rebekah Wilson.

In the east wing, a textile–video installation by Verena Melgarejo Weinandt traces gestures of care, belonging, and collective healing. Woven, blue-toned fabrics occupy the space, threaded with black braids that recall both flowing water and strands of hair. Embedded within the textile landscape, a three-channel video follows a performance of preparing, braiding, and washing textiles in a river. Through this cyclical act — hands weaving, water cleansing — the work meditates on the continuity of bodies of water, where rivers become oceans. The intertwining of hair and current evokes ancestral memory, with water carrying histories of care and resilience.

The exhibition is a ceremonial act of reclamation and a form of homecoming that moves beyond activism, offering a more profound form of resistance. Without abrasive rhetoric or jargon it speaks with a gentleness, an unfolding, a softness—a poetic articulation of cultural survival. 

Repatriates Collective is a collaborative artistic-research project that investigates what happens when European museums are asked to return their collections to communities with cultural and historical connections to those art works. The repatriation of cultural belongings often involves complex political, historical, legal, and emotional factors. The collective responds to various contemporary international cases, including Austria-Mexico, the UK-Australia, Switzerland-Nigeria, France-Benin, and Germany-Namibia, employing diverse research methods to expand upon the artists’ role in these ongoing processes. For the Tide of Returns exhibition at Ocean Space, key participants include Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Kasimir Burgess, Rebekah Wilson, Syd Britten Andrews, and a group of Anindilyakwa artists, among them Noeleen Lalara, Nikisha Wanambi, Sheanah Marawili, Kaysheanne Murrugun, Annabell Amagula, Lusanne Murrugun, Marcia Mamarika, Arabella Wanambi, Elsie Bara, Lily Yantarrnga, Charmaine Kerindun, Meaghan Wanambi, Angela Robyn Williams, Maureen Bara, Maicie Lalara, Bernadette Watt, Lucinda Murrugun, Janelle Mamarika, Noelita Lalara, Shirly Yantarrnga, Stephanie Durilla, Natalie Yantarrnga, Chailene Yantarrnga, Charlene Wanambi, Alice Durilla, Sharna Wurramara, Rebecca Yarntarrnga, Rita Bara, Sue Bara, and African artists Joel Haikali, Nesindano Namises, Samson Ogiamien, and Laimi Kakololo.

Verena Melgarejo Weinandt is a German-Bolivian artist, researcher, curator, and educator. She is currently part of the ERC-funded artistic research project “Repatriates” at the Central European University in Vienna and has previously worked within the DFG Research Group “Knowledge in the Arts” at the University of the Arts Berlin. Working with performance, textiles, photography, video, and installations she addresses colonial and patriarchal structures, using her body and (ancestral) history as tools for collective transformation, exploring how our relationships with the fictive, the imaginary, and non-human beings are ways to (re)construct both individual and collective identities. Her artistic practice has been exhibited internationally at venues including La Virreina Centre de la Imatge (Barcelona), Manifesta 14 (Pristina), the 16th Bienalsur (Buenos Aires), Bienal Sur (Cúcuta 2019), nGbK Berlin, and Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), as well as at various international film festivals. She has also curated exhibitions at the Weltmuseum Wien, Wiener Festwochen, and District School Without Center (Berlin).

Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, born in Naarm (Melbourne) Australia, is an artist and filmmaker. She is a Professor of History and Director of the EU Horizon 2020 project REPATRIATES: Artistic Research in Museums and Communities in the Process of Repatriation from Europe and the collective of artists and researchers that are part of it. She earned a PhD in Art and Architectural History from Harvard University and is the author of the books Art in the Time of Colony; The Importance of Being Anachronistic: Contemporary Aboriginal Art and Museum Reparations; Botanical Drift; Bordered Lives: Immigration Detention Archive, The Contested Crown: Repatriation Politics between Mexico and Europe and the forthcoming Voyages of Belonings: Art and Repatriation, based on this project. Her artistic practice combines word and image montages in film and installations, giving voice to alternative narratives through text and performance. Her works have been presented in numerous international exhibitions and artistic research projects including at the Venice, Marrakech, Atlantic and Sharjah Biennales, ZKM, Manifesta, Wien Woche, Extracity, Savvy, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, MAA Cambridge, Royal Museums Greenwich, Frieze London, and the Wende Museum LA. She has won awards at Casablanca, Ethnokino and St Kilda film festivals.