As cultural institutions in parts of Brazil begin to reopen, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo announced that it would host a new solo exhibition in November in conjunction with its larger group biennial exhibition postponed until next fall.
The new show, titled Vento (in English for Wind), is taking place from November 14 to December 13 at the traditional home of the Biennale, Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo in São Paulo do Ibirapuera Park.
The exhibition is absolutely free, but visitors have to book tickets beforehand. Vento presents a group of 21 artists, including 10 artists who have just participated in the Biennale. These are Alice Shintani, Ana Adamovich, Eleanor Koch, Gala Porras-Kim, Jacqueline Nova, Koki Tanaka, Louise Cunha, Melvin Moti, Musa Michelle Mattiuzi, and Paulo Nazareth, who were streaming at the Pavilion on November 13th.
Other artists included in Vento are Antonio Diaz, Dina Lawson, Joan Jonas, Leon Ferrari, Jader Esbell, Regina Silveira, and Ximena Garrido-Lecca.
Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, the chief curator of the exhibition, said in a statement that this exhibition functioned as an index for this edition of the São Paulo Biennale in the sense that it pointed to some of the themes that would be expanded at the exhibition in September 2021, and at the same time referred to what had already happened, just as a pointer was a trace in semiotics.
Ever since the pandemic forced the world to isolate itself, Visconti and his curatorial team have stepped up their online offerings. They also announced six other artists participating in a digital initiative associated with the exhibition called “A Bienal tá on”. They are Jaune Quick-to-see, Lydia Ourahmane, Naomi Rincon Gallardo, Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste, Sung Tieu, and Uýra Sodoma.
Previously, museums of São Paulo, such as the Pinacoteca and the Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP), began to open their doors to the public with limited seating.
However, the number of new COVID cases in Brazil is on the rise, although it has not yet reached its peak in summer. In the state of São Paulo, the daily average of cases in the previous 7 days is about 4,500 (or 10 per 100,000). The state has reported 1.1 million cases and over 39,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
Elsewhere in the world, museums have begun to close their doors as their countries began to impose new restrictions to stem the ongoing second wave of Covid-19.
Jose Olimpio Pereira, TOP 200 collector and president of the Biennale Foundation, said in a statement that the São Paulo art biennial played an important role in the cultural life of the city. He also noted that they are now holding this exhibition and reopening the Pavilion with the same intention – to create an opportunity to be together in a safe way around works of art that can help us individually and collectively experience the unique moment in which we live.
Here`s the complete list of participants São Paulo biennial:
- Abel Rodríguez;
- Adrián Balseca;
- Alfredo Jaar;
- Alice Shintani;
- Ana Adamović;
- Antonio Dias;
- Beatriz Santiago Muñoz;
- Carmela Gross;
- Carolina Maria de Jesus;
- Clara Ianni;
- Daniel de Paula;
- Deana Lawson;
- Edurne Rubio;
- Eleonora Fabião;
- Eleonore Koch;
- Frida Orupabo;
- Gala Porras-Kim;
- Giorgio Morandi;
- Gustavo Caboco;
- Hélio Oiticica;
- Jacqueline Nova;
- Jaider Esbell;
- Jaune Quick-to-See Smith;
- Joan Jonas;
- Jota Mombaça;
- Juraci Dórea;
- Koki Tanaka;
- Lasar Segall;
- León Ferrari;
- Luisa Cunha;
- Lydia Ourahmane;
- Lygia Pape;
- Manthia Diawara;
- Marinella Senatore;
- Melvin Moti;
- Musa Michelle Mattiuzzi;
- Naomi Rincón Gallardo;
- Neo Muyanga;
- Noa Eshkol;
- Paulo Nazareth;
- Philipp Fleischmann;
- Regina Silveira;
- Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste;
- Sung Tieu;
- Trajal Harrell;
- Uýra Sodoma;
- Ximena Garrido-Lecca;
- Yuko Mohri;
- Zina Saro-Wiwa.
The second oldest art biennial in the world
The Sao Paulo Biennial was initiated in 1951 and is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennale, which was organized in 1895 and served as a role model.
The Sao Paulo art Biennial was founded by the Italian-Brazilian industrialist Cicillo Matarazzo (1898-1977). Since 1957, the Sao Paulo Biennial has been held at the Cicillo Matarazzo Pavilion in Ibirapuera Park.
The pavilion has an exhibition area of 30,000 m2. São Paulo Biennial presents not only Brazilian but also foreign artists and is considered one of the most important art exhibitions in the country.
In 1962, the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo was created, taking over the organization of the exhibitions, which had previously been successfully managed by the Museum of Contemporary Art of São Paulo, MAM-SP. The site it occupies today has become the venue for the Biennale since the 4th edition.
The original goals of the São Paulo Biennial are to make contemporary art famous in Brazil, expand the country’s access to the art scene in other metropolitan areas, and make São Paulo an international art center. The Biennale serves to bring Brazilian art closer to an international audience, and vice versa. International exhibitions are run by alternate chief curators.
Fundação Bienal de São Paulo is a dynamic institution that develops and implements artistic, educational, and social initiatives.
In addition to hosting the São Paulo Biennial, it hosts events throughout the year in the pavilion, which is a symbol of Brazilian modernist architecture, as well as inside and outside Brazil. This is a cultural institution with no political or religious affiliation. Fundação Bienal seeks to present new ideas, provoke debate and educate a public with an ever-renewing sense of concern, purpose, and question.
The artists and their works
Frida Orupabo
Frida Orupabo is a Norwegian-Nigerian artist and sociologist. She first exhibited her work at Arthur Jafa’s 2017 solo exhibition at Serpentine Galleries in London.
She used to post her collages of the most common colonial and cultural images on Instagram, although she began exhibiting at leading galleries and institutions after that show. Orupabo’s paper-pinned portraits of disembodied, anonymous black women showcase the brutal and brutal legacy of colonialism.
Her assemblies are left untitled, highlighting the now unknown names and histories of her subjects, once considered insignificant to the dominant forces.
Naomi Rincon Gallardo
Mexico City currently based in Vienna. Understanding research as an artful and transdisciplinary fiction, Rincon Gallardo examines initiatives related to the creation of counter worlds in neo-colonial settings. She uses masquerade lenses and absurdity to create a space between radical utopian experiences, fantasies, and crises of belief.
Jaider Esbell
Zina Saro-Viva
Zina Saro-Viva is an artist working mainly with video, but also photography, sculpture, sound, and food. She lives and works in Brooklyn and also practices in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. There, she founded the Boys’ Quarters Project Space, a contemporary art gallery that she regularly oversees. This year the artist is presented at São Paulo Biennial.
Philipp Fleischmann
Another artist featured at São Paulo Art Biennial is Philipp Fleischmann.
Philip Fleischmann is an artist and filmmaker from Vienna. Since 2014 he has been the artistic director of the Friedl Kubelka School of Independent Film. Exhibitions and screenings (a selection) are mumok kino, One Work Gallery, Vienna Secession, Berlinale Forum Expanded, Toronto International Film Festival, Viennale, Diagonale Graz, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Belmacz Mayfair, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Media City Film Festival, and Anthology Film Archives.
Sung Tieu
Sung Tieu is an artist from Vietnam who immigrated to Germany as a child.
She battles historical notions and analyzes the transnational movements of people and objects – whether it be exploring diaspora communities or commercial, over-accelerated ways of replicating global capitalism. Themes of migration, exile, and legal gray areas permeate her work between installation, film, and sculpture, as the works depict and fictionalize autobiographical experiences.
Alfredo Jaar
Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. The artist has taken part in the Venice Biennale, São Paulo Biennial, and Documenta in Kassel.
Marinella Senatore
Marinella Senatore is a multidisciplinary artist. Her practice is characterized by strong participation and constant dialogue between history, popular culture, and social structures. Marinella Senatore’s art is pure energy; energy that flows from a short circuit between different elements that it binds in the same space, real or virtual.
Eleonore Koch
Eleanor Koch, also known as Lore Koch, was a Brazilian painter and sculptor of German descent. She was best known for her paintings that conjure up everyday objects and also explore the sensory nature of painting through the tension between color planes and line.
Jota Mombasa
Born and raised in northeastern Brazil, Jota Mombasa writes, performs, and explores the relationship between monstrosity and humanity, research, decolonial turns, political intersectionality, anti-colonial justice, redistribution of violence, science fiction, the end of the world, and the contradictions between ethics, aesthetics, arts and politics in the knowledge production of the global south-south.
León Ferrari
Leon Ferrari was an important Argentine artist whose work dealt with issues of inequality and discrimination. His works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the São Paulo Museum of Art, and others.
Paulo Nazareth
A multi-medium artist, Nazareth uses performance and sculpture – monumental and ephemeral – to critique the colonial experiences of Brazil and America. His performances and installations draw on his shared African and Indigenous heritage to highlight marginalized historical heritage, non-Western cosmic visions, and potential methods of non-exploitative living and communication.
Artists from completely different genres are represented at the Sao Paulo Art Biennial. Without a doubt, this is an event of a global scale that should never be missed.
