BERN.- Kunsthalle Bern is presenting its summer program including the first part of a newly commissioned opera series by Jota Mombaça.

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The exhibition compost (continuum) by Jota Mombaça is one of four chapters in a non-chronological opera series, produced in collaboration with Kunsthalle Bern, Sonsbeek Biennial 2026 (Arnhem, Netherlands), Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai, China), and Inhotim Museum (Brumadinho, Brazil). The series echoes the artist’s continuous investigation into climate catastrophe and the limits of its human apprehension. For the exhibition, Mombaça works in close collaboration with the Colombian-Canadian singer and songwriter Lido Pimienta, the composer Pedro Santiago, as well as a growing network of musicians, activists, and academics to articulate an interdisciplinary body of work that weaves together sound, poetry, installation, drawing, and sculpture. Drawing from elemental theory, Elizabeth Povinelli’s notion of 'geontology' and relational materialisms, compost (continuum) critically exposes the extractive legacy of Swiss companies in South America, specifically regarding coal extraction at sites such as the Cerrejón Mine—the largest coal mine in the world, located in the Guajira region of Colombia.

The chapter presented here unfolds as a large-scale installation combining sound, sculpture and painting. Ceramic tiles and other organic materials will transform the Kunsthalle into a sensorial landscape animated by voices of the earth, which resonate throughout the space, forming a relationship with the visual works by sonically expanding their presence across the exhibition space. The project articulates a critical speculation on the continuities between the destruction of South American native landscapes and the melting of glaciers in Switzerland. Infused with a poetics of geological time and planetary memory, it confronts the realities of climate catastrophe while reframing extractivism not only as an ecological condition, but as a politics of perception that renders minerals, landscapes, and colonized territories inert, exploitable, and ultimately 'ungrievable.' Through this, Jota Mombaça opens a space for other modes of relation, where mourning, resistance, and collective imagination emerge as transformative forces.





JOTA MOMBAÇA (*1991 in Natal, Brazil), lives and works in Lisbon, is an interdisciplinary artist whose work encompasses poetry, drawing, performance, installation, sound, and video. Informed by anti-colonial critique and queer studies, much of her work delves into the escalating impact of the climate crisis, traversing such topics as global water transport, displacement, water control systems, queer mourning, and time travel. Mombaça’s work has recently been presented at Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2024) and Kunstinstitut Melly, Rotterdam (2023-2024); as well as in major exhibitions such as the 32nd and 34th São Paulo Biennale (2016 and 2020/2021); the 22nd Sydney Biennale (2020); and the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018).