EN / ES


From indigenous knowledges to digital technologies

Tabita Rezaire is an interdisciplinary artist and activist exploring the intersections between technology, spirituality, decolonization and healing. She uses video, performance art and the creation of immersive spaces to challenge hegemonic narratives and advocate a holistic understanding of the world in which realities are interconnected. Her work focuses on the decolonization of knowledge and on researching the ways in which patriarchal and power structures shape our perception and use of technology. Rezaire’s work salvages ancestral knowledges and practices that were marginalized or silenced, and merges indigenous, African and non-Western knowledges with digital technologies to explore how spiritual and healing practices can be used as tools for resistance, emancipation and reconstruction of identities and communities.

Tabita Rezaire. Calabash Nebula brings together two newly-produced installations: Des/Astres and Omi: Yemoja Temple (2024).
 
Des/Astres is an installation co-produced by TBA21 and the Louis Vuitton Foundation. It is inspired by the ‘tukisipan’ buildings of the Wayana, with their ‘malawana’ (house sky). These are meeting places for assemblies, celebrations, exchange, transference and collaboration. The video installation - which is projected on the underside of the carbet’s roof as a digital sky - delves into Amazonian astronomical traditions and French Guiana’s strategic position amid global space challenges, encompassing both terrestrial and extraterrestrial realms.
 
OMI: Yemoja Temple is an immersive installation dedicated to the Orisha Yemoya, mother spirit of rivers and oceans, symbol of the origin and perpetuity of life. This work is the outcome of a collaboration between artist Tabita Rezaire, artist and architect Yussef Agbo-Ola and biologists Alex Jordan and Anja Wegner, from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour. The work explores the intersection of biology and spirituality, focusing on water as its main motif. It is the result of a research trip to Tanzania undertaken by the four collaborators to study the flora and fauna of the coral reefs and the ecosystem of Lake Tanganyika. The alignment of biology, ecology, spirituality and architecture offers new perspectives on aquatic dimensions and the origin of life. This sensorial temple, shaped as a droplet, invites visitors to connect with an environment inhabited by physical and spiritual beings through an indigo-dyed textile surface and an immersive sound installation. This piece has been co-produced by Schering Stiftung and TBA21.
  
The exhibition features an extensive program of activities which will include performance art, workshops, talks, and more; in them, international experts and thinkers will take part alongside local artists and agents. A digital publication related to the show will be available for download.

About Tabita Rezaire

Tabita Rezaire’s path as an artist, devotee, doula, and cacao farmer is all geared towards manifesting the divine in herself and beyond. As an eternal seeker, Tabita’s yearning for connection finds expression in her cross-dimensional practices, which envision network sciences - organic, electronic and spiritual - as healing technologies to serve the shift towards heart consciousness. 
 
Embracing digital, corporeal and ancestral memory, she digs into scientific imaginaries and mystical realms to tackle the colonial wounds and energetic misalignments that affect the songs of our body-mind-spirits. Tabita’s work is rooted in time-spaces where technology and spirituality merge as fertile ground to nourish visions for connection and emancipation. Through screen interfaces, healing circles and land stewardship, her offerings aim to nurture our collective growth and expand our capacity for togetherness. 
 
Tabita is based in French Guiana, where she is caring for  AMAKABA a center for the arts of earth, body and sky.
 
Her offerings have been shared widely – Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, Museum of Modern Art – Paris; MASP, São Paulo; Serpentine , ICA, V&A, Tate Modern– London; MoMa, New Museum, MoCADA – NY; Gropius Bau Berlin; and within international biennales in Sydney, Shanghai,  Guangzhou, Lagos, Kochi, Athens, Helsinki, Busan,Berlin. She is represented by the Goodman Gallery.


About Yuseff Agbo Ola. Artist and Medicinal Architect. (b. 1990 Newport News, USA) 

Yussef Agbo-Ola is the founder and creative director at Olaniyi Studio based in London, Ibadan, and the Amazon Forest. Born in rural Virginia in a multi-heritage Nigerian, African-American, and Cherokee household, his work reflects hybrid identities and relationships to different landscapes, ecologies, and cultural rituals. Agbo-Ola’s multidisciplinary architectural and artistic practice is focused on interpreting natural energy systems, through interactive experiments that explore the connections between an array of sensory environments, from the biological and anthropological, to the perceptual and microscopic. His aim is to use diverse multidisciplinary research methods and design components, to reinterpret local knowledge and its environmental importance cross-culturally. His research outcomes manifest through architectural pavilions, material alchemy, interactive performance, experimental sound design, and conceptual writing. 

Agbo-Ola holds a Masters in Fine Art from the University of the Arts London, and a Masters in Architecture from the Royal College of Art. He has created art and architectural commissions for the United Nations, Institute of Contemporary Art (London), Serpentine Gallery London, TEDx East End, BBC Arts, Venice Architectural Biennials, Palais de Tokyo, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Arts Catalyst, and Lexus Automotive Innovation Centre Japan, among others. Agbo-Ola is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture at Columbia GSAPP where he directs an experimental design studio within the Advanced Architectural Design program.