In the second year of collaboration with C3A, Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía in Córdoba, TBA21 presents Remedios – Where new land might grow, an exhibition responding to multifaceted and rapidly multiplying emergencies of the present.
By envisioning artistic practices of collective healing and reparation, the exhibited works and the public program invite the audience to engage with works of art for solace, joy, and replenishment. It follows the invaluable intuition and guidance of artists and embraces the capacity of art to advocate for reparative labor, healing, and social transformation. The works, selected from the TBA21 Collection and the commissioning bodies TBA21 on st_age and TBA21–Academy, echo the curative path of healers and elders who have politically, culturally, and spiritually guided communities through the remembrance of past wrongs toward reconciliation and the celebration of renewed worlding.
In the context of Remedios, curator Daniela Zyman suggests thinking about healing as “a communal and coalitional project, rather than personal transformation. It doesn’t mean fixing the symptoms of malaise but working on the reality-system, which has caused it. The deeply demanding work of reparation and reconstruction provides directions for inventive and mindful ways of reassembling what has been broken in the interests of humans, nonhumans, and the planet.”
For some artists, healing begins with the cadences of the body; the purification of the spirit; the articulations of language, sacred shapes, materials, and symbols; or in their perception of time and history. Others direct their care at the land, the environment, and their respective communities. As environments are reshaped by mining, logging, agriculture, and resource extraction, they impact and alter their respective ecosystems. There is no longer a choice to be made between social and environmental justice, both are entangled and reinforce each other. Remedios is committed to proposals that consider and reflect these entangled politics while trusting the regenerational capacities art can offer to unfold as, “an origin + + where new land might grow + + +” (Akimel O’otham and Mojave poet Natalie Diaz).
In an ailing world, art can hold contradictions and conflicts where politics cannot. This capacity aligns it with the work of healers and guardians—performing, adapting, rethinking itself on behalf of itself and in the service of others. The artists in the exhibition contribute works such as a large assembly tent, a kupixawa, by the Amerindian Huni Kuin in collaboration with Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto; a mothership dreamcatcher by Brad Kahlhamer; and a Yemaya orisha altar by Courtney Desiree Morris.
These works lay out a critical trajectory connecting the ancestral to the present time and help us gauge what is at stake in today’s struggles. They are a source of strength and replenishment in the face of collective anxiety triggered by the profound transformation of economic, political, and technological relations.
Remedios presents works from the TBA21 Collection, including artists Marina Abramović, Etel Adnan, Kader Attia, Cecilia Bengolea, Gabriel Chaile, José Covo, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Natalie Díaz, Olafur Eliasson, Noa Eshkol, Guo Fengyi, Newell Harry, Brad Kahlhamer, Sharon Lockhart, Thiago Martins de Melo, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Courtney Desiree Morris, Eduardo Navarro, Shirin Neshat, Ernesto Neto and the Huni Kuin, Xiomara de Oliver, Daniel Otero Torres, Mònica Planes, PLATA with Víctor Barrios, Nohemí Pérez, Belén Rodríguez, Sandra Vasquez de la Horra, Klaus Weber and Francesca Woodman.
Press release from TBA21
