Calabash Nebula
October 8, 2024–January 12, 2025
Curated by Chus Martínez.
We often talk about physical and technological spaces, but how do experiences contribute to the production of new mental spaces? How do ideas emerge in these mental spaces? How do ideas turn into values? The artistic practice of Tabita Rezaire focuses on combining languages, images, values, roles and relations capable of forming a completely different and unique “mental space.” Once inside this mental space the mind looses the rigidity imposed by our daily practices and cultural paradigms and acquires an unprecedented fluidity. We, then, find ourselves carried away in the currents of feelings and thoughts that open up a new world and almost effortlessly build up new meanings and interpretations of reality. It feels like magic but it is just the emergence of world that follows a different logic.
Calabash Nebula is the title of the exhibition enacting this experience presented by TBA21 at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. The project consists of three intertwined recent works by Tabita Rezaire: OMI: Yemoja Temple (2024), the result of a collaboration between Rezaire, the artist and architect Yussef Agbo-Ola, and the biologists Alex Jordan and Anja Wegner from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz; Des/astres, the last chapter of a trilogy including Mamelles Ancestrales (2019) and Orbit Diapason (2021); and the textile circle Omo Elu (2004). The three works support each other in creating a chain reaction effect: a strong presence of the natural elements, diverse forms of interpreting the real, open understandings of intelligence and a very eloquent spiritual language that does not exclude any culture or any tool existing to grasp the meaning of the world coexist. Surrounded by all these stimuli our senses and our mind start to loosen up. In doing so we enter into a state open to surprise and its power. We are so exhausted that we dream of forms of scape and catharsis. We are wishing for a miracle capable of reversing all the damage that has been imposed among us. This way of thinking avoids the task of searching and defining non-cathartic experiences. Experiences that are not oriented to agency, to enhance the feeling of purgation or release and still are positive. Indeed the art practice of Tabita Rezaire is not there to provide our tired and a little bit cynical minds a service, a door to escape. On the contrary, her works make us enter into states of suspended agency in order to discover dimensions that escape "use", the capitalization of the spiritual, the trivialization of complex and grand experiences.
This exhibition proposes a very particular way of communicating the importance of the sensuous to give birth to new ideas. Ideas that are based on the importance of grasping the importance of affective force. A force that we need individually and collectively to remain social, to sustain equality and all that is worth living for.
As always the project will be nourished by a great series of talks and performances —the program will be soon announced on TBA21's website—intended to enhance the collective experiencing of all these ideas and mind spaces. A digital booklet with a curatorial introduction and texts and conversations by Joël Vacheron, Omikunmi Egbelade and Tabita Rezaire can also be downloaded from the TBA21's site.
—Chus Martínez, exhibition curator
Tabita Rezaire. Calabash Nebula showcases three new works by the artist produced in 2024: OMI: Yemoja Temple, co-produced by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and Schering Stiftung, Berlin, where the work was presented as part of the exhibition Omi Libations (April–July 2024); Des/astres, commissioned and co-produced by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, where the work will be presented in 2025 as part of the Open Space program; and Omu Elu, commissioned by Lagos Biennale (2024), Nigeria, courtesy of Tabita Rezaire and Goodman Gallery.
The public program for the exhibition has been generously supported by Institute Française Madrid, Real Observatorio de Madrid, Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC), and developed In collaboration with Educathyssen and Organismo I Art in Applied Critical Ecologies.
About Tabita Rezaire
Tabita Rezaire’s path as an artist, devotee, doula, and cacao farmer is all geared towards manifesting the divine in herself and beyond. As an eternal seeker, Tabita’s yearning for connection finds expression in her cross-dimensional practices, which envision network sciences - organic, electronic and spiritual - as healing technologies to serve the shift towards heart consciousness.
Embracing digital, corporeal and ancestral memory, she digs into scientific imaginaries and mystical realms to tackle the colonial wounds and energetic misalignments that affect the songs of our body-mind-spirits. Tabita’s work is rooted in time-spaces where technology and spirituality merge as fertile ground to nourish visions for connection and emancipation. Through screen interfaces, healing circles and land stewardship, her offerings aim to nurture our collective growth and expand our capacity for togetherness.
Tabita is based in French Guiana, where she is caring for AMAKABA, a center for the arts of earth, body and sky.
Find out more about TBA21’s program at tba21.org
