otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua

The exhibition underscores the power of improvisation~freestyle as both a tool and an aesthetic strategy that can be used to transcend terrestrial and extractivist perspectives for our planet, expand the ideas of what is possible in the creation of systems for sustaining life, and grapple with entrenched notions of power.

The main themes of The Current IV have been developed into the two semesters TBA21–Academy’s online learning initiative OCEAN / UNI (2024/2025), this year entitled “bárawa” (“Ocean” in the Garífuna language of Guatemala).

Nadia Huggins was born in Trinidad and Tobago and grew up in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where she is currently based. A self taught artist, she works in photography and, since 2010, has built a body of images that are characterized by her observation of and interest in the everyday. Her work merges documentary and conceptual practices, which explore ecology, belonging, identity, and memory through a contemporary approach focused on re-presenting Caribbean landscapes and the sea. Huggins'photographs have been exhibited in group shows in Canada, US, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados, Ethiopia, Guadeloupe, France, and the Dominican Republic. She has had solo shows in US at KJCC/NYU, NYC and at The Betsy Hotel, Miami, and in Europe in London and at Now Gallery. Her work forms part of the collection of The Wedge Collection (Toronto, Canada), The National Gallery of Jamaica (Kingston), and The Art Museum of the Americas (Washington DC, USA).

Tessa Mars is a Haitian visual artist who explores gender, landscape, migration, and spirituality in relation to Haitian history. Working primarily in painting and papier maché, the artist takes distance from colonial narratives to reconnect to a Haitian perspective of the world and embrace other forms of collective belonging. Mars received a BFA from Rennes 2 University in France in 2006 and is now based in Haiti and San Juan Puerto Rico. She has had solo exhibitions at Le Centre d’Art and the French Institute in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and has participated in collective exhibitions at Tiwani Gallery, London, UK; Denver Art Museum, CO; Art Africa Miami, FL; Ateliers ’89, Oranjestad, Aruba; Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien, Port-au-Prince, Haiti; 30th International Symposium of Contemporary Art of Baie-Saint-Paul, Canada; Alice Yard, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; and Cité international des arts, Paris, France. Tessa Mars was part of the first Haitian pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale.

Yina Jiménez Suriel, curator and researcher with a master's degree in visual studies. Her curatorial practice is nourished by the transdisciplinary research she develops around the construction of imagination, contemporary emancipatory processes and reconciliation with constant movement, entitled la historia de las montañas. She is Adjunct Curator of the 14th Bienal do Mercosul (2025); Fellow curator of The Current IV by TBA21-Academy and Associate Editor of Contemporary And (C&) for Latin America and the Caribbean. Her curatorial projects include Vehículos. Una revisión (2018) at Casa Quien (Dominican Republic); the first and second phases of de montañas submarinas el fuego hace islas that took place between Pivô (Brazil) and Cinemateca Dominicana (Dominican Republic) in 2022 and between KADIST San Francisco (USA), Delfina Foundation (UK) and the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design Manila (Philippines) in 2023-2024, editing its two publications; and desde los azules (2024) at the Kunsthalle Lissabon (Portugal). She was Co-Curator of the Opening section of ARCOmadrid 2023 and 2024. Yina lives in the Dominican Republic.