“What would the bottom of the ocean tell us tomorrow, if it were emptied of water today?” is the question evoked by Grada Kilomba in Opera to a Black Venus (2024), a video installation at Galeria Galpão, Instituto Inhotim. The work is presented in Brazil for the first time and forms Act III of O Barco (2021), a large-scale installation that has occupied the space at Inhotim since 2024.

Kilomba imagines a scenario in which the seawater disappears, revealing a vast ground that, like a burial ground, holds the archaeology of human existence where the historical and cyclical repetition of violence is laid bare. The sound and choreographic situations bring to the surface, in a poetic way, the millions of lives lost over centuries in the oceans — through the slave trade, colonialism, wars, genocides, forced migration, and climate crises.

During the opening, on February 7, from 3 pm, the artist will take part in a public conversation.