At Ocean Space Venice, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) Academy’s latest exhibition reframes repatriation as a poetic, living process shaped by water, community, and care.
In ‘Tide of Returns’, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21)–Academy opens its 2026 programme at Ocean Space with an exhibition that moves beyond the language of restitution into something more intimate and relational. Developed through the artistic research of the Repatriates Collective, the exhibition gathers artists, filmmakers and Indigenous communities across Australia, Africa, Europe and Latin America to consider how cultural belongings return not only through institutions, but through embodied practices, memory and ritual.
Set within the former Church of San Lorenzo, the exhibition unfolds as an immersive environment rather than a conventional display. In the west wing, a vast installation anchored by sand transported from Anindilyakwa Country becomes a living terrain populated by thousands of handcrafted figures. Formed from shell, textile and story, these sculptural presences act as vessels of ancestral knowledge, carrying songs, histories and kinship across oceans.
Here, repatriation is not staged as a singular event, but as an ongoing, tidal movement. Historical objects, including shell dolls returned from European collections, are recontextualised alongside newly created works, forming a continuum between past and present. The gesture is quiet yet insistent, proposing return as a process of cultural survival and intergenerational transmission rather than institutional closure.
In the east wing, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt’s textile and video installation shifts the register toward gestures of care. Braided fabrics and flowing water converge in a cyclical performance of washing and weaving, evoking the body as archive and water as carrier of memory. The work insists on continuity, in which rivers and oceans collapse into one another and histories of resilience are held in repetition and touch.
Across both spaces, water operates not simply as a metaphor but as a method. It connects geographies, sustains memory, and redefines the politics of return through fluid, collective forms of knowledge. This approach aligns with TBA21–Academy’s ongoing commitment to ocean literacy and intercultural dialogue, situating art as a site for ecological and epistemic repair.
Importantly, ‘Tide of Returns’ resists the declarative tone often associated with debates around restitution. Instead, it offers a softer, more expansive articulation of homecoming, one rooted in listening, reciprocity and the slow work of relation. In doing so, it reframes repatriation not as an endpoint, but as an evolving practice shaped by communities, currents and care.
This exhibition will be on view at Ocean Space, Church of San Lorenzo, Venice, until 11 October 2026
