JOTA MOMBAÇA IN SWITZERLAND: CHALLENGING THE COLONIAL LOGICS OF EXTRACTIVISM

The Kunsthalle Bern is presenting compost (continuum), a project by Jota Mombaça (Natal, Brazil, 1991) that forms part of a series of non-chronological interventions developed in collaboration with art institutions in Switzerland, the Netherlands, China, and Brazil. Through this project, she continues her investigation into climate catastrophe, situating it within a critical body of work that examines how colonialism, racism, and capitalism have shaped relations between people, territories, and natural resources.

For Mombaça, crisis also emerges as the outcome of a history structured by unequal power relations. In this exhibition, the artist brings together sound, poetry, installation, drawing, and sculpture, consolidating the interdisciplinarity that defines her practice and expanding the conceptual frameworks of elemental theory, geontology, and relational materialisms.

The exhibition critically examines the extractive activities of Swiss companies in South America, specifically coal mining at the Cerrejón mine in La Guajira, Colombia—one of the largest coal extraction sites in the world and a site of ongoing conflict and systemic dispossession affecting local communities. The installation combines sculpture, painting, sound, and installation-based works, employing a high proportion of organic materials that symbolically and physically transform the space into a sensorial landscape.

To enable the “earth’s cry” to resonate throughout the gallery, Mombaça constructs an immersive experience in which each artistic element is amplified into a dense, enveloping dialogue. For this project, she collaborates with contributors including Colombian-Canadian singer and composer Lido Pimienta, composer Pedro Santiago, and a wider network of musicians, activists, and scholars, reinforcing the poetic and political dimension of a work that exposes the consequences of an extractive model that continues to reproduce colonial logics.

Jota Mombaça: compost (continuum) is on view through 23 August 2026 at Kunsthalle Bern, Helvetiaplatz 1, Bern, Switzerland.