TBA21–Academy together with renowned artist Claudia Comte installed a permanent underwater exhibition in Jamaica, transforming her newest series of site-specific cacti sculptures into sustainable works dedicated to ocean advocacy. The installation is designed to reinvigorate the reef and function as a new home for local marine life when overlaid with coral.
 
Conceived during Comte’s TBA21–Academy residency at Alligator Head Foundation, the sculptures were created on-site at the Foundation with the support of the Academy’s first-ever technology resident Nathaniel Petre, who is investigating how 3D printing can create sustainable solutions that benefit local economies. The residency also provided the artist with an outdoor studio, sourced and supplied local materials, and provided access to its network of coral specialists and international and local marine biologists working at the Alligator Head Marine Lab. 

Claudia Comte (b. 1983) is a Swiss artist who works in a variety of media, including sculpture and painting. Her approach is defined by her interest in the memory of materials and by a careful observation of how the hand relates to different technologies, and her work has been collected by institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.