Ocean, Memory and Resistance: Caribbean Geographies at Ocean Space, Venice

Following a talk at Ocean Space with the curator and artists, I connected with Yina from the Dominican Republic, and we discussed the core themes of the exhibition: oceanic and geological movement, and how populations transformed deterritorialization into acts of anti-colonial resistance between mountains and sea—shaping aesthetic strategies that continue to emerge from these histories.

Huggins and Mars’ works evoke shipwrecks, layered geological planes, submerged voices, and fragments of stories that shape the present. The conversation that follows aims to convey the project’s vision amidst shifting geographies and decolonizing imaginations.

(by Alessandra Alliata Nobili)

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Nadia Huggins, “A shipwreck is not a wreck”, 2025. View of the exhibition “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [altre montagne, dissolte sotto l’acqua]“, Ocean Space, Venezia. Commissionata da TBA21–Academy. Foto: Jacopo Salvi

Yina, could you please explain for our readers the exhibition’s title? How does it relate to the overall project “The Current IV”?

Yina Jiménez Suriel : The title of the exhibition coincides with that of the research. We can say that the exhibition represents a synthesis of the research journey developed throughout the project. 

On one hand, we focused on the geological evolution of the Caribbean region. However, I want to clarify that I do not use the label “Caribbean” lightly, because, conceptually, it is a historical construct linked to the colonial enterprise.

Of course, this term has the limitations of the context in which it was created. I think it’s interesting, not only for the Caribbean but also for other parts of the world where labels have been assigned based on specific historical contexts, to reflect on how to overcome these definitions and find new narratives—with our own voices.

For this reason, we chose to investigate the evolution of the Caribbean tectonic plate, which has an oceanic origin. There are various tectonic plates like this on the planet, but most are much larger. The Caribbean plate, on the other hand, is a small section of the Earth’s crust, situated between the North and South American plates, and has special characteristics.

For example, the North American plate, despite being much larger, does not have an oceanic origin. It’s interesting to note that because it is oceanic, the Caribbean plate slides beneath the North American plate, since oceanic crust is the heaviest part of our planet’s “skin.” (An oceanic plate is a portion of the Earth’s lithosphere under the oceans, thinner, denser, and in constant movement; a continental plate is thicker, less dense, and forms the continents. Ed.)

Adopting a geological perspective also means placing ourselves on a vastly different time scale—one that predates human existence. During our research, we focused on geological evolution and the formation of mountains, also in relation to human presence and experience.

Portrait of Yina Jiménez Suriel. Photo by José Rozón, 2024.

Why mountains? Because, at different points in history, they have been central places for revolutionary processes. Archaeological analyses have provided material evidence that, before the colonial enterprise, mountains were fundamental spaces for indigenous communities living in this part of the world.

After the beginning of colonization, mountains—even submerged ones—became central scenes in struggles for freedom. The same happened after the formation of the first nation-states (such as Haiti, Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia, Costa Rica): once again, mountains became sites of resistance.

On one side, the geological perspective allows us to go beyond a colonial viewpoint; on the other, the construction of mountains reconnects us with the human experience. The intersection of these two levels creates a new scenario, opening possibilities to imagine new forms of emancipation.

Then, if we combine these perspectives with that of the ocean—symbolically and materially in the middle—we see how, in our research on the oceanic origin of the plateau and the movements of liberation throughout human history, a key element emerges: constant movement. To me, the ocean embodies exactly this: movement. It not only represents it but it is movement. And it is in this quality that we sought a possibility for transforming imagination.

Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. View of the exhibition “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [altre montagne, dissolte sotto l’acqua]“, Ocean Space, Venezia. | Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi

I would like to deepen the discussion around the conceptual strategies you mentioned as framework for the exhibition—specifically, freestyle, floating, and transmutation. How do these elements connect to imagination? What is their relationship with colonialism and a new colonialism that exploits the ocean for extractive purposes?

Yina Jiménez Suriel : I would say that it’s not only about colonial forces in a historical sense, but primarily about those forces operating according to a binary and stable logic. I am referring specifically to extractivism, which was an integral part of the European colonial enterprise but persists today in new forms.

We live within a colonial logic because even our imagination is anchored in binary, fixed structures. That’s why, speaking of political geo-colonialism, we can say that even those previously called “colonial subjects” continue, in various ways, to reproduce this logic.

Is that why you talk about “decolonizing the imagination”?

Yina Jiménez Suriel: Exactly. Decolonizing the imagination means decolonizing the subconscious because the colonial logic is engraved right there, in the subconscious— which is a constantly active machine. 

Returning to your question, I think it’s very important to emphasize that it’s not about good and evil; it would be simpler if it were so, but it’s much more complex. Being what was once called a ‘colonial subject’ doesn’t automatically exempt you from reproducing colonial logics.

Regarding the conceptual strategies and tools, these are part of a theoretical framework I developed over nearly thirteen years and refined over time. Suffice it to say that these strategies took shape within the human subconscious as responses to overcoming colonialism—whatever that word might mean today. They are not tools created solely by humans, but their goal is always the same: to access the unconscious.

Of course, not all these tools have the capacity to do so. I discussed this also with the Brazilian psychoanalyst Suely Rolnik, who collaborated with the psychoanalyst, philosopher, and semiologist Félix Guattari: together, they formulated the hypothesis that some strategies can touch desire, understood in a psychoanalytic sense as a vital force. Touching desire means opening a space, making it possible for the unconscious to express something else, to signal that different possibilities exist.

These strategies and tools have been developed by humans in conjunction with much older vital forces over millennia, to access the unconscious and overcome the difficulties imposed at certain points in history. To go into detail about those you mentioned, we started, right from the first year of The Current IV, with floating, repetition, transmutation, and improvisation (freestyle). These practices are connected to various processes of emancipation that have taken place in this part of the world, the Caribbean.

But we realized that these themes were too vast to be addressed all at once; it would have been dispersive, so we focused on improvisation and freestyle. These are practices that belong to the most superficial layer of most Caribbean people, but at the same time, they are shared with many other regions of the world.

Thinking about how to mediate this project across the Caribbean, in Venice, and in other global contexts, we tried to find ways to communicate genuinely, to create spaces for dialogue. And, above all, to push to the maximum the transformative potential of these tools and strategies.

Nadia Huggins, “A shipwreck is not a wreck”, 2025. View of the exhibition “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [altre montagne, dissolte sotto l’acqua]“, Ocean Space, Venezia. Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi

Can you tell me about the Garifuna people? How did your conversations on and with the Garifuna people during the project in the Caribbean shape the conceptual foundation of the exhibition?

Yina Jiménez Suriel : Historically, the Garifuna are a group of indigenous communities originating from South America who initially settled in Saint Vincent, where they began resisting the colonial advances of the Spanish and British. In that context, they formed alliances with Africans who had been enslaved: it was a crucial moment of syncretism. It was primarily an indigenous population that had managed to resist colonization for more than a century.

From a conceptual viewpoint, the Garifuna played an important role in shaping the research. They are one of the few communities in this part of the continent that today inhabit multiple nation-states: Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, representing a nation made up of people who managed to escape the logic of the nation-states. In a sense, they serve as a bridge between the insular Caribbean and the mainland Caribbean—and I think this is a truly significant element.

If we adopt an oceanic perspective, there’s no longer any reason to sharply distinguish between islands and the continent: instead, we have a space that has been shaped by the ocean’s movements over geological time.

Naturally, the processes of decolonization led to the creation of nation-states, but this does not mean there aren’t other — perhaps better — ways of living. In this sense, the Garifuna embody a fluid community, capable of eluding binary logics and the rigid frameworks imposed by modern politics.

When England decided to intensify colonial occupation, the British, unable to subjugate the Garifuna, proposed an agreement. In reality, their goal was to exterminate them: they boarded them on a ship with the intention of leaving them adrift in the Atlantic. 

However, the Garifuna managed to navigate through the Caribbean Sea, and after a shipwreck near Roatán Island in Honduras, they began settling along the coasts of the present-day nations. On the mainland coast of the Caribbean, they did not settle in the mountains but always near the sea.

Tessa Mars, “a call to the ocean”, 2025. View of the exhibition “otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua” [altre montagne, dissolte sotto l’acqua]“, Ocean Space, Venezia. | Commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Jacopo Salvi

Let’s try to connect the story of the Garifuna with the works exhibited at Ocean Space. Can you tell me about Nadia Huggins’ work and how she manages to transform a traumatic event, such as a shipwreck represented by the skeleton of an overturned hull, into a protective space, a refuge?

Yina Jiménez Suriel : In Nadia’s work, the only real connection with the story of the Garifuna is precisely the concept of shipwreck itself. Nadia’s piece is not directly intended to be linked to their history. Many Garifuna scholars, for example, do not interpret the shipwreck as a trauma, although there are different perspectives on this point.

One of the ways Nadia conceived her work was: let’s take a step back and try to imagine what was happening at the very moment of the shipwreck, without attributing it a fixed meaning. She wants to leave it to the historians of the Garifuna communities to build that meaning and tell that story.

An interesting aspect of her work is that the wreck’s skeleton becomes a space in transformation. We cannot say that it is necessarily beautiful or ugly; rather, it is a passage, a change. 

In this sense, it can resonate with the experience of the Garifuna: regardless of how that experience is labelled, the event of the shipwreck created the conditions for a different way of inhabiting the region.

Having said that, the positive connotation is limited to that initial moment. We cannot project that meaning onto the entire historical process. Even today, for example, the Garifuna population in Guatemala faces numerous difficulties in asserting their freedom and their right to exist within the Guatemalan state.

Nadia Huggins,: “The beginning is the end and the end is the beginning 7”, 2021

Could you tell me how, in her works, Nadia Huggins represents the ocean as a fluid entity in constant transformation? Her videos within the work seem to illustrate this relationship.

Yina Jiménez Suriel : I would like to highlight that Nadia is one of the very few artists in the Caribbean contemporary art scene who, from the beginning of her career, started paying attention to the ocean—when it was not yet a central or “trendy” theme.

According to my interpretation, this attention stems from her personal life experience living on a small island—an experience that is not, for example, mine. For her, the ocean is a constant presence, an entity that is always close. She has a direct, continuous relationship with the sea, of a physical and material nature. In other contexts, such as Cuba or Haiti, the connection with the ocean is often mediated through spiritual practices; in her case, however, it is something quotidian, sensory, corporeal.

Her main medium is photography—and thus vision—and it is precisely this vision, understood as the dominant sense, that is transformed by this relationship with the sea. From the very beginning, her work has challenged fixed categories. Her gaze has always been oriented toward transformation.

When she started photographing, around 2010, she was in a very precise moment of transition: that period when the climate crisis was becoming visible and tangible. Nadia began to craft her work in a liminal space, between an ocean still healthy and an ocean already sick, marked by profound transformations.

This shift signifies a second level in her work: if you have an authentic bond with the ocean and witness what is happening, then that relationship can only also become political—in the various ways in which a political position can be practiced.

Behind-the-scenes photoshoot for the production of Tessa Mars’s opera A call to the Ocean (2025), at the scenography room of the Teatro Comunale di Modena, Modena, 2025. The opera was produced for the exhibition otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua [other mountains, adrift beneath the waves], Ocean Space, Venice, 2025.

Let’s talk about Tessa Mars’ work. I find it interesting how she interweaves aesthetically the geological element of mountains and the ocean.

Yina Jiménez Suriel : Yes, there is a fundamental aspect in Tessa Mars’s work regarding the intertwining of mountains and ocean, but to understand it, we need to start from the context of her research.

At a certain point in her journey, Tessa began questioning the figures of the Haitian Revolution. Well-known names like Jean-Jacques Dessalines or Toussaint Louverture are all men. For about ten years, Tessa investigated the otherness in these heroic narratives and the reasons for the absence of women. We know that during the Haitian Revolution, it was not only men who fought for freedom, yet only a single female figure is included in the national epic.

Tessa took this marginal figure as a starting point to reflect on who has been excluded from the revolutionary story. And I think this is already something extraordinary: no one before her had dared to question a moment perceived almost unanimously  only as positive and foundational. 

Finding an artist able to raise these questions meant encountering someone capable of challenging binary and fixed thinking.
Another fundamental feature of her work is her strong relationship with storytelling. Even though her main medium is painting, her practice is driven by narration. And I thought that if we really wanted to challenge a “land-based” perspective of the Caribbean and propose an oceanic one, storytelling would be the key.

Artists with a strong narrative practice are, in this sense, already at the forefront, capable of offering new perspectives. Furthermore, Tessa also has a deep connection with performance and sculpture. That’s why I imagined her work could dialog with Nadia Huggins’s work, especially concerning discussions about mountains—both visible and submerged.

Both I and Tessa come from an island—Haiti—that has the highest mountains in all the insular Caribbean. And this hugely influences our idea of “island.” It differs greatly from, for example, Nadia’s conception, who maintains a more direct and material relationship with the sea.

However, this insular experience of mountains also has a very strong connection to other territories in the continent: Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia. Mountains were crucial for the experience of marronage—the flight and resistance of enslaved people. If we want to ask where marronage originated, we need to look at the area that is now the Dominican Republic, just a few miles from the Haiti border, in a mountain chain called Sierra de Bahoruco. It is from there that marronage began to spread.

So, it’s not just a symbolic or metaphoric issue: having a mountain perspective was essential, even for thinking about how this region produced experiences of freedom. Tessa, through storytelling, speaks of freedom in many ways.

Personally, I really appreciate that she doesn’t seek “perfect” painting; what matters in her work is the broad perspective she manages to offer.

Portrait of Nadia Huggins. Photo di Zaina Mahmoud, 2022.

Could you explain the role of sound in the two installations on display?

Yina Jiménez Suriel : Sound probably represents the primary language for most people in the Caribbean—I’m talking about sound and oral narration, understood as a fundamental mode of transmitting knowledge. 

In Nadia’s work sound is constantly present, with a strong emphasis on low frequencies. These low frequencies are often associated with practices that induce trance states: low percussion, for instance, plays a central role in many ceremonies and rituals. In this case, it’s a strategy to facilitate a more immersive and profound experience of the work.

In Tessa’s case, instead, sound relates to very precise historical references, such as the Haitian Revolution or the marronage experience. The latter involved the use of conch shells from early on—a sound tool that contributed to building a real sound language, enabling a form of communication and resistance.

Another significant element is that both sound installations were created by the same musician and are modulated on the same frequency. This means that, although not synchronized, the two compositions intertwine and respond to each other: the sound in Tessa’s work seems to react to the “call” launched by Nadia’s work, creating a deep dialogue between the two pieces.

To wrap up our conversation, can you tell me what have been the main challenges—and opportunities—in presenting stories from the Caribbean within a particular Italian context?

Yina Jiménez Suriel : It’s a situation I know quite well now, because it’s part of my research journey. One of the most complex aspects was undoubtedly making dense, profound, and layered concepts accessible within the exhibition.

 But more than explaining, the goal was to create a space for exchange: a place where the audience, artists, and institutions could truly sit around a table and engage in dialogue.

In Venice—and more generally in Italy—this takes on particular significance, given the importance of this context in the contemporary art landscape. The greatest challenge was perhaps to propose an image of the Caribbean that goes beyond stereotypes: labels imposed by colonial histories, such as the British “Caribbean” or the French “Antilles.” With this exhibition, we wanted to offer an alternative perspective that moves away from these definitions.

We questioned not so much how the colonial experience shaped the relationship with the ocean, but rather what the ocean itself means today. It is an open question. The risk, if we limit ourselves to only discussing the consequences of colonization from the 15th to the 19th century, is that we only see that fragment of time— as if there was nothing before, and nothing after.

This exhibition, on the other hand, aims precisely to go beyond, to tell the ocean outside of a Eurocentric perspective. And I think one of the most stimulating aspects of Ocean Space is exactly this: viewing the ocean as an autonomous entity, not as a place from which to derive simple answers, but rather as a space that raises fundamental questions—for those living in the Caribbean region, but also for the rest of the world.

If in the future, someone in the Caribbean will want to explore this project in more detail, they will be able to do so. But for me, at this moment, it was important to offer a broad vision and to open a conversation.

Ocean Space, Church of San Lorenzo, Photo: gerdastudio