Release of 17.03.2021
Opening May 3, 2021, the leading art and ocean advocacy organization, TBA21–Academy, will present a solo exhibition dedicated to artist Taloi Havini at the organization’s public venue, Ocean Space in Venice. To welcome as many visitors as possible, the space will be exceptionally open Monday through Sunday, 11 am to 6 pm during the first opening week, in compliance with the current Italian COVID-19 regulations.
Taloi Havini was born in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, in the South West Pacific Ocean. In late 2020, Havini took part in a research trip mapping the Australian Great Barrier Reef sea-bed with Schmidt Ocean Institute. She responds to this experience through her own inherited Hakö epistemologies of navigating time and space, drawing from a sonic call and answer method. Havini's new artist commission by TBA21–Academy, Answer to the Call (2021), is an invitation to journey with the artist into a space of deep listening.
Currently based in Australia, Havini's work takes on many forms, including sculpture, video, photography, and immersive installations. In her practice, she delves deeply into themes of representation, habitats, inheritance, and the transmission of Indigenous Knowledges. During Havini's time on the Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel, R/V Falkor, she observed the bathymetry methods of sending and receiving sound pulses from the ship and in which the speed of sound was measured to produce never before seen high-resolution visual data maps of the oceans floor.
Similarly, Answer to the Call, a twenty-two-channel sound piece, uses an ancient compositional technique that produces a dialogue between these different ways of knowing through a method of a call and response. Through the inclusion of her own Hakö language and instruments that conjure her navigational ancestors, Havini moves beyond a sonic measuring of space and distance, asserting the presence of a much deeper, cyclical understanding of the ocean, space, and time. The track evolves to include archival sources, such as hydrophone recordings of sonar mapping taken on the R/V Falkor, ocean traveling chants, and an instrumental piece composed by renowned Bougainville musician Ben Hakalitz.
For the exhibition, The Soul Expanding Ocean#1: Taloi Havini, the artist invites her audience to reflect on these concepts. She has created a theatrical set comprising primarily indigo, aquamarine, and ultramarine blue tones. These tones invoke different depths of water and connect the audience to Buka, Bougainville, the artist's homeland. A central island platform within the space mimics the shape of Buka and is surrounded by 22 speakers at three interactive levels. In this theatre, Havini subverts the gaze associated with scientific exploration and instead invites the listener to congregate on the island immersed in the shifting tides of sound. Surrounded by a backdrop of towering and undulating ultramarine curtains, the audience - who may never go to the Pacific - is placed in the center of the conversation Havini is creating. They become actors engaged in the pursuit of knowledge through active and deep listening. Like the ocean, this conversation will be refreshed throughout the course of the exhibition as new audiences enter and a program of conversations takes place. The ancient proverb, 'I am because I belong with others,' is a fundamental belief Answer to the Call brings to life.
The Soul Expanding Ocean #1: Taloi Havini has been curated by Chus Martínez, TBA21–Academy's newly appointed Curator of Ocean Space for 2021-2022, following her leadership of the Academy's program The Current, in which Havini participated. This three-year fellowship program sets out to strengthen the friendship between artists, scientists, activists, and policymakers. Friendship is a key notion since it implies a mutuality among different practitioners based on affection, a deep commitment to staying in touch, and staying attentive to each other's work. And so, The Soul Expanding Ocean, the exhibition program TBA21–Academy initiated with Havini's new commission should be seen as the continuation of this collective effort to understand the Ocean through the senses, analyze the possibilities with affection, and propose future scenarios intertwining imagination with knowledge.
"Schmidt Ocean Institute is delighted to collaborate with TBA21–Academy on the installation of The Soul Expanding Ocean #1: Taloi Havini. We depend on the vision of artists to bring Ocean research to life for new audiences, and Taloi's inspirational works open doors of experience that can help enhance public perceptions about why Ocean health matters to everyone. We are excited to create a more inclusive space for the global marine science community while making science more compelling for the public." - Wendy Schmidt, Co-Founder of Schmidt Ocean Institute
The reopening of Ocean Space will also mark the launch of the second chapter of Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation, curated by Daniela Zyman. Territorial Agency's on-going project commissioned by TBA21–Academy explores new ways of connecting research groups that address the oceans at a time of rapid change, linking science, arts, and politics by way of shared images, datasets, and narratives. The second chapter of this research exhibition continues to unfold the complex processes taking place in the global ocean in the Anthropocene while raising new issues and questions in collaboration with an open research community of ocean thinkers and practitioners over the last year. These gatherings were colored by the epidemic, the unfolding "climate" of anti-blackness, anti-democratic maneuverings, and the push-back against environmental concerns that marked much of the past year. These unprecedented intensities have shaped Oceans in Transformation with new materials and arguments, contributing tangible proposals on how to address the destabilizations and dangers caused by sea-level rise, the ecological devastation of the oceans, as well as the economic fragility and volatility stemming from the oceans' unpredictability and massive transformations.
The exhibition is on view until August 29, 2021, and will be further activated during the Venice Biennale of Architecture, opening in May 2021, where Territorial Agency presents Sensible Zone, an extended research into the trajectory focusing on sea-level rise. On this occasion, the publication OCEANS Rising, a capacious accompaniment to the research conducted by Territorial Agency on the rapidly changing oceans and the intricate dialogues it has triggered with scholars, activists, and ocean scientists, will be presented to the public.
Please note that online booking is mandatory during weekends and bank holidays at least one day prior to the visit. You can book your visit via Eventbrite here. No booking required on weekdays. ______________________________________________________________________________________
Note to Editors
For further information and images, please contact Scott & Co:
Charlotte Wittesaele, charlotte@scott-andco.com
Location
Ocean Space
Campo S. Lorenzo, 5069
30122 Venezia
Opening dates
The Soul Expanding Ocean #1: Taloi Havini
Curated by Chus Martínez
May 3 – October 17, 2021
Commissioned by TBA21–Academy and co-produced with Schmidt Ocean Institute, co-founded by Wendy Schmidt.
The development of this new work was supported by an Artspace Studio Residency.
Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation
Curated by Daniela Zyman
May 3 – August 29, 2021
Commissioned by TBA21–Academy and co-produced with Luma Foundation.
TBA21–Academy is a contemporary art organization and cultural ecosystem fostering a deeper relationship to the Ocean through the lens of art to inspire care and action. For a decade, we have been an incubator for collaborative research, artistic production, and new forms of understanding by combining art, science, and other knowledge systems, intertwining imagination and possibility in regenerative relationships, resulting in exhibitions, research, and policy interventions.
Ocean Space is a new planetary center for catalyzing ocean literacy, research, and advocacy through the arts. Established and led by TBA21–Academy and building on its expansive work over the past ten years, this new embassy for the oceans fosters engagement and collective action on the most pressing issues facing the oceans today. Opened in March of 2019, Ocean Space is inhabiting the Church of San Lorenzo in Venice.
The Schmidt Ocean Institute was established in 2009 and offers scientists and collaborating institutions free ship time aboard their research vessel Falkor. The Institute strives to advance the frontiers of ocean research and exploration through technological innovation, operational support, and open sharing of information. Schmidt Ocean Institute's Artist-at-Sea program was established in 2015 so that artists from broad disciplines could work together with scientists to gain inspiration from the research and share about complex ocean issues in new ways. Since 2015, over 36 artists have voyaged aboard the research vessel Falkor, and more than 100 pieces have been showcased in 16 exhibits in 12 cities.
Taloi Havini (b. 1981, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea) currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Havini's work is often a personal response to the politics of location, exploring contested sites and histories connected within Oceania, employing photography, sculpture, immersive video, and mixed-media installations. Working with living contemporary practitioners, she is actively involved in community projects in Bougainville and Australia.
Havini's artwork is held in public and private collections, including the Sharjah Art Foundation, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, National Gallery of Victoria, KADIST, San Francisco, CA, USA. Taloi holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the Canberra School of Art, Australian National University and has exhibited in Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Sharjah Biennial 13, UAE, 3rd Aichi Triennial, Nagoya, 8th & 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art Queensland Art Gallery, GoMA, Brisbane.
Chus Martínez is head of the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design in Basel, and in 2021-22, the Curator of Ocean Space, Venice, TBA21–Academy's center for catalyzing ocean literacy, research, and advocacy through the arts. Previously, she led The Current II (2018–20), a project initiated by TBA21–Academy. The Current is the inspiration behind Art is Ocean, a series of seminars and conferences held at the Art Institute which examines the role of artists in the conception of a new experience of nature.
Territorial Agency is an independent organization that combines architecture, analysis, advocacy, and action for integrated spatial transformation of contemporary territories, founded by the architects Ann-Sofi Rönnskog and John Palmesino. Territorial Agency is engaged to strengthen the capacity of local and international communities in comprehensive spatial transformation in an age of climate change—the Anthropocene. Recent projects include Museum of Oil with Greenpeace, ZKM Karlsruhe, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial; Anthropocene Observatory with HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin; the Museum of Infrastructural Unconscious; North anon; Unfinishable Markermeer; Kiruna. They teach at the AA Architectural Association School of Architecture, London.
Daniela Zyman is the curator of the exhibition "Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation" and chief curator and artistic director of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21). The organization's mission is to commission, collect, and present the best of contemporary art through an ambitious program of exhibitions and events and to pursue urgent ecological, social, and political issues. Zyman joined TBA21 in 2003 and has played an instrumental role in shaping its exhibition and commissions program. Between 1995 and 2001, Zyman was chief curator of the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art in Vienna, which included the founding and programming of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles.