TBA21’s 2024 program brings together diverse practitioners rehearsing strategies of ecological regeneration and worldbuilding through the lens of art. The vibrant program in Madrid in collaboration with the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, in Córdoba at C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, at TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space in Venice and beyond, is driven by the belief in art and culture as accelerants of urgently needed social and environmental transformation.
Exhibitions in Spain
Stephanie Comilang: Search for life
Curated by Chus Martínez
March 5–May 26, 2024, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
The first major solo exhibition held by the artist in Spain will display a new video work, co-commissioned with the Sharjah Biennale, and an installation sculpture, fusing documentary and fiction to propose a different understanding of nature, impacted by colonial exploitation, but also of rituals, which make new beginnings possible.
The Ecologies of Peace
Curated by Daniela Zyman
April 26, 2024–March 25, 2025, C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba
The Ecologies of Peace – the exhibition that concludes TBA21’s trilogy initiated in 2022 at C3A – redefines peace through the prism of ‘just peace,’ a concept introduced by John Paul Lederach. Transcending the traditional notion of peace as the mere absence of war, the exhibition embraces the interplay of peacebuilding with restorative, transformational, and ecological justice, featuring the works of Manthia Diawara, Marine Hugonnier, Saodat Ismailova, Nikita Kadan, Cristina Lucas, Jasbir Puar and Dima Srouji, Walid Raad, and Sissel Tolaas, among others.
Wu Tsang
July 19–November 3, 2024, MACBA, Barcelona
Commissioned by TBA21, MACBA presents the premiere of Wu Tsang’s new film installation, which is part of an ongoing series exploring the myth of Carmen, the protagonist of Georges Bizet’s opera.
Tabita Rezaire
Curated by Chus Martínez
October 8, 2024–January 19, 2025, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Tabita Rezaire’s interdimensional method visualizes networked sciences as healing technologies, which are organic, electronic, and spiritual. Through her video installations, she reinvents contemporary technology, viewed through the lens of ancestral science, in order to re-examine our relationship with the cosmos.
At TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space in Venice
Prometeo: Tragedia dell’ascolto
January 26–29, 2024, Ocean Space, Venice
To celebrate the centennial of the birth of the great Venetian composer Luigi Nono Prometeo. Tragedia dell’ascolto will be staged again in the Church of San Lorenzo, now Ocean Space, where the historical performance was held in 1984. The opera is produced by La Biennale di Venezia in collaboration with Fondazione Archivio Luigi Nono.
Re-Stor(y)ing Oceania
Curated by Taloi Havini
March 23–October 13, 2024, Ocean Space, Venice
In the exhibition comprising two new site-specific commissions by Latai Taumoepeau and Elisapeta Hinemoa Heta, Havini’s curatorial vision is guided by an ancestral call-and-response method, used as a means to search for solidarity and kinship in uncertain times in order to slow down the clock on extraction and counter it with reverence for the life of the Ocean. Heta will design and develop a space of exchange and conversation with custodians from across the Pacific Ocean, inviting contributions from multi-disciplinary practitioners. Further details of the program are to be announced in early 2024.
Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss
A research inquiry led by Prof Ute Meta Bauer
March 23–October 13, 2024, Ocean Space, Venice (research room)
The materials presented are the outcome of a three-year research grant from Singapore’s Ministry of Education housed in the NTU School of Art, Design, and Media, responding to the inaugural cycle of TBA21–Academy’s The Current Fellowship (2015–2018). Alongside former fellows and current research collaborators Nabil Ahmed, Guigone Camus, Kristy H.A. Kang, Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe, Armin Linke, and Lisa Rave, Bauer and other researchers in Singapore revisit connections and conversations that further explore archipelagic networks across the Alliance of Small Island Developing States, from Singapore in the Riau Archipelago to Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean.
More about our research & education activities
Organismo: Art in Applied Critical Ecologies
A new independent study program by TBA21–Academy in co-production with Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, January–June, 2024
OCEAN / UNI Spring 2024
Spring semester: Pacific Resistance, January 31–April 4, 2024
Ocean-Archive.org & TBA21 on st_age
Explore TBA21’s digital ecosystem.
The Current IV: Caribbean
The fourth cycle of The Current curatorial fellowship is led by Yina Jiménez Suriel.
