Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
[+]Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
[-]Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
[+]Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
[-]Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
[+]Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
[-]Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
[+]Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
[-]Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
[+]Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
[-]Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
[+]Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
[-]
Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. Exhibition view of “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi
First presented at Ocean Space in 2025, this exhibition features works by artists Nadia Huggins and Tessa Mars, uniting reflections that have been integral to their artistic practice from the outset with those that have emerged over the course of two years of work on TBA21–Academy’s curatorial fellowship program, The Current IV: Caribbean. The exhibition features a multimedia installation by Nadia Huggins, merging documentary and conceptual practices to dispute the binary representations of Ocean and land through a dynamic interplay of elements that challenges the romanticized gaze of underwater worlds. Alongside, paintings and sculptures by Tessa Mars contrast terrestrial and oceanic perspectives through multilayered compositions, reflecting, at the same time, on the morphological shifts in landscape, identity, and memory.
The culmination of the three-year-long collaborative research process undertaken by Yina Jiménez Suriel, whose vision is complemented in Panama by the curator Juan Panela, the exhibition underscores the potential of improvisation as both a tool and an aesthetic strategy that can transcend terrestrial and extractivist perspectives, reimagine systems for sustaining life, and grapple with entrenched notions of power.
Curated by Yina Jiménez Suriel and Juan Canela
Organized by TBA21–Academy in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Panama