I’m happy to share excerpts from a great article by Will Jennings (*wallpaper), compatible with installation by Nadia Huggins (A wreck is not a wreck) and Tessa Mars (A call to the sea) – Curated by Yina Jiménez Suriel – Francesca Thyssen Bornemisaz TBA21 Exhibition in Venice, Ocean space. The exhibition will be on display at Chiesa Di San Lorenzo until November 2, 2025.
that Venice It is well known that it will slowly sink into a lagoon. Each year, water is lined up slightly higher on historic buildings and technical solutions, and is proposed to slow the impact of climate collapse on one of the world’s most important cultural sites. Culture, especially the whole culture City Biennaleis often used to discuss the importance of recognizing climate issues and to discuss the importance of “raising awareness” of the crises we are collectively facing (as if most planets still don’t recognize them keenly), but many organizations do not actively attract cultural offers with direct action.
TBA21Francesca Thyssen Bornemissa is based in 2002, founded by philanthropists and art patrons. Madrid There is an experimental exhibition space underground at Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. From the beginning, intended not only as an art, but also as a platform for advocacy, education and outreach, it presents projects from around the world, including one of Venice’s most spectacular exhibition spaces.
Ocean Space is a Venetian offer for TBA21, located within the 16th century church, Chiesa di San Lorenzo, where the 16th century church is at a very large interior height, and visitors will quickly turn their heads back upwards. Due to the sense of light quality and internal depth, the sensation has the feeling of looking up at the surface from a sea bed. A wreck is not a wreckNadia Huggins’ sculptures, sounds and video works invite visitors to recline to the floor under the skeleton of a fallen hull, between the hulls, rocks, sea creatures, and bodies that hide their visitors. “We are on the ocean floor, and the projections on the ceiling are watching these people swimming above their heads. It has 360 views of being underwater,” Huggins talks about his disorientation and deep relaxation.
Huggins’ work speaks of colonial and marine history and how it provides lessons on how humans respect aquatic ecology, as well as how they can provide better work in our own world. The marine space is divided by altars on either side with openings that allow vision and sound to move between, with a sculpture painting by Tessa Mars standing on the other side of the groove space. Mars’ A call to the sea It is a series of theatrical style flats depicting mountain landscapes by the artist, depicting landscapes sinking under the ocean, perhaps unseen by human eyes. The characters seem to blend in with the compression of life and nature, a scene that seduces us again the future relationship between us and the world we are in.
Both installations were curated by Yina Jiménez Suriel as part of a three-year research project as a curation fellow at TBA21-Academy. It is the research arm of an organization seeking to use art as a creative tool as a methodology that intersects science, politics, activity, policy and protection. This is part of some cross-stranded strands of the TBA21 program, all focusing the art as a process rather than as a result. [. . .]
For the complete article, please refer to https://www.wallpaper.com/art/exhibitions-shows/ocean-pace-xhibition-tba21
[Shown above, photo by Jacopo Salvi: 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.]
