otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua

The Ocean is a common space between the different embryonic horizons that seek to guarantee life on our planet today. While the interconnectedness that the Ocean offers is often perceived through its biological implications, the Ocean is also a common ground for contemporary emancipatory processes within the human species—processes that invariably extend to non-human forms of life. At the heart of these emancipatory movements lies an urgent imperative: to transcend the landbound perspective that has historically shaped and constrained both our sensory system and our modes of knowledge production. The symbolic and material structures we have inherited are anchored in a notion of the binary and the stable, and the Oceanic perspective offers an alternative framework that enables the formation of life through perpetual motion.

Within the framework of the long-term research project by Jiménez Suriel “la historia de las montañas” [the history of the mountains], the following strategies and tools have been identified: repetition, fugue, improvisation~freestyle, transmutation, oneiric processes, and flotation. Among these, in the expanse of planetary skin known as the Caribbean tectonic plate, improvisation~freestyle emerges as particularly significant, spanning life from the highest terrestrial peaks to the other mountains, adrift beneath the waves. For this reason, “The Current IV” has dedicated three years to its study and application.

The exhibition “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves] features newly commissioned works by artists Nadia Huggins and Tessa Mars, both of whom explore and facilitate engagement with improvisation~freestyle as a means of transcending landbound perspectives, reimagining systems of sustenance, and interrogating entrenched power structures.

In her video installation “A shipwreck is not a wreck” (2025), Huggins examines the potential of the tool improvisation~freestyle in interaction with human perception. If binary and stable frameworks have led to the internalizing of mechanisms of domination—both sensory and collective—then improvisation~freestyle compels us to confront the boundaries of this matrix, inviting us to recognize the need for alternatives. The work guides visitors through the skeletal remains of a shipwreck, now inhabited by both human and non-human entities undergoing a multi-vector process of transformation, ultimately merging into a common geological body and starting the cycle anew.

The shipwreck itself is an enigmatic presence, known only through its physical manifestation in the exhibition space. The viewer bears witness to its catalytic impact on the processes unfolding in the work, where rocks, corals, humans, jellyfish, and mangroves collectively exemplify how the Ocean is both a generative force and a site of existence. Far from conforming to conventional notions of what is «good», their movements embody a spectrum of emotional complexity. By juxtaposing the shipwreck motif with interactions among the characters depicted in the work, the artist challenges the linear and often romanticized narratives with which both science and the humanities have historically approached world-building.

“A shipwreck is not a wreck” employs a dynamic interplay of intensities, velocities, repeated movements, shifts in focus, and spatial, auditory, and temporal disorientation. These formal strategies serve to confront the limits of human sensory capacities while also pointing toward the possibility of expanding them, toward a point where perception itself becomes something other. In this way, improvisation~freestyle is not merely a thematic concern but an intrinsic methodology underpinning the reflective nature of the work.

“otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” is structured as a dialogue in three acts: through Huggins’s reflective work, the first and third acts take place in the Oceanic realm, while the second act is anchored in the mountainous landscapes above sea level. In this segment, Mars explores these formations as historical and contemporary sites of marronage in Abya Yala—spaces where Indigenous and African-descended communities have sought to transcend the binary and stable perspective of reality imposed by colonial enterprises, a struggle that persists today in the ongoing contestation of subjectivity.

In her painting installation “a call to the ocean” (2025), Mars considers improvisation~freestyle as a strategy for accessing spaces of "fugue", a concept formulated by artist and philosopher Dénètem Touam Bona, for whom "to fugue is not to be sent running but, on the contrary, to make flee, to put it through endless variations so as to evade its grasp in every way. The fugue is creative ardour". Thus, the interplay between improvisation~freestyle and fugue engenders a multiplicity of ways of being, resisting the co-optation of imposed realities while contributing to the saturation of the binary logic that underpins power structures.

In Mars’s work, mountains are not merely passive features of the landscape but entities in themselves, their geological evolution inscribed within a cycle of fugue that has directly shaped human and non-human life. The artist contrasts terrestrial and oceanic perspectives: the former regards mountains as exploitable spaces within extractive economies, while the latter perceives them as key agents in the evolution of otherness. As visitors navigate the work’s multilayered composition, they encounter figures seemingly caught in deep slumber and undergoing morphological shifts. While each figure appears to be at a different stage of introspective transformation, the interplay between these layers suggests a form of collective harmony, a network woven through ethereal visitations from life forms whose movements belong to other temporalities, accompanying them in their process of (trans)formation. Their bodily realities are reconciled within the larger oceanic process of perpetual motion.

Mars proposes that the mountains above sea level serve as guides in our journey toward submerged mountains. Endowed with our planet’s timeless wisdom, these mountains, adrift beneath the waves, remind us that they have not only harbored and catalyzed the possibility of other worlds, but may also provide the conditions for the materialization of alternative horizons yet to be seen.

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.