36th Bienal de São Paulo (2025) – Catalog

Ministry of Culture, Government of the State of São Paulo, through the Secretariat of Culture, Creative Economy and Industry, Municipal Secretariat of Culture and Creative Economy of the City of São Paulo, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and Itaú present

36th Bienal de São Paulo

36th Bienal de São Paulo

Since its creation in 1951, the Bienal de São Paulo has been marked by constant renewal. Each new chapter in its history proposes a way of existing in time and space, always in dialogue with the contemporary. The 36th edition of the event, under the title Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice, is based on a curatorial concept developed by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. Inspired by the poem “Da calma e do silêncio” [Of Calm and Silence] by Conceição Evaristo, the chief curator proposes an attentive listening to the multiple forms of humanity in displacements, encounters, and negotiations.

The Fundação Bienal de São Paulo believes that its mission is based on a central precept: relevance. This means producing meaning, generating access, and positively impacting as many people as possible. Being relevant means responding to the most pressing issues of our time while also embracing the doubts and uncertainties, in other words, asking questions. To this end, the curatorial selection, an assignment of each new board, is the first step. From there, the artists and their works unfold, chosen for their critical, aesthetic, and conceptual power, and for their ability to reflect or stress collective challenges. But no work is complete alone: the conditions for visitors to approach, interact, and find a space for exchange at the event must be created. This is done before, during, and after their visit, with educational materials, digital content, and new publications, which together broaden the experience and encourage a closer relationship with contemporary art, as well as research and audience building.

Being part of the development of a Bienal is a privilege. It’s watching art history unfold before your eyes – and seeing yourself in it. By following the birth of an exhibition of this scale, we become part of the living process of creation. From the conceptual decisions to the dismantling and the many waste treatment processes when the event is over, each stage requires precise coordination, constant dialogue, and shared responsibility between professionals from multiple fields.

This edition also has a special feature: its extended duration, from September 2025 to January 2026, prolonging its presence in the cultural calendar by one month. More than just an extension of time, it’s a matter of enhancing the possibilities for encounters. And, as always, access is free, both to the exhibition and its programming –a commitment by the Fundação to the democratization of art and the ongoing construction of an increasingly participatory cultural public.

None of this would be possible without the joint commitment of our partners, especially the public bodies and sponsoring companies that believe in the relevance of art as a way of creating a better future for everyone. And, of course, it wouldn’t be possible without the Fundação Bienal’s professionals and the large network of collaborators who diligently ensure that demanding deadlines are met, that the planned actions are rigorously executed, that the institution’s financial health is maintained, and that this jewel of modernism, the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, the main stage for all these meetings, is well preserved. It is this commitment that guarantees the permanence of a historic project that has been going strong for more than seven decades – guided by the certainty of excellence and relevance.

Andrea Pinheiro President – Fundação Bienal de São Paulo

The Ministry of Culture celebrates the 36th Bienal de São Paulo –Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice, an edition inspired by the verses of the renowned writer Conceição Evaristo. Through the Culture Incentive Law, known as the Rouanet Law, the Federal Government is proud to be one of the producers of this important event that brings together leading artists from all over the world to engage with fundamental issues of our times, amplified by an educational program that is internationally recognized.

The visual arts have the power to confront us with the most pressing themes of our time, employing complex poetic approaches that resist simplification or easy answers. More than offering solutions, the Bienal poses questions and multiplies perspectives, establishing contact with the diverse, with other life experiences, and with different ways of inhabiting the world. Visiting the Bienal offers a chance to broaden aesthetic and ethical repertoires through the exercise of empathy involved in engaging with works of art – an essential step toward strengthening a more citizenoriented culture.

The Ministry of Culture has worked tirelessly to support the cultural sector, creating opportunities for artists and cultural workers across diverse languages and fields. Through initiatives such as the Rouanet Law, the Paulo Gustavo Law, and the National Aldir Blanc Policy for Cultural Support, this Ministry has been proud to promote projects throughout the country, strengthening the creative economy and working toward the implementation of permanent and democratic cultural policies.

The Bienal de São Paulo offers access to art free of charge, in a meaningful effort to democratize access to culture – an effort that aligns with the public policies advanced by this Ministry. Art and education are indispensable to ensuring the right to a full and critical citizenship, which belongs to all Brazilians. For this reason, the Federal Government, here represented by the Ministry of Culture, remains committed to investing in initiatives that promote full cultural engagement, so that present and future generations can access the transformative experience that art provides.

Margareth Menezes Minister of Culture – Federal Government of Brazil

For more than 35 years, Itaú Cultural (IC) has played a fundamental role in boosting the appreciation of art, culture, and education in a complex and heterogeneous society like Brazil. This role is expanded through essential partners for the development of the cultural and creative economy, such as the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo.

Itaú Unibanco is proud to be the strategic partner of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo – a partnership that spans the past 27 years, with this being the 12th edition held in that period – reaffirming its commitment to promoting the visual arts and their transformative role. The Bienal de São Paulo is an important meeting and exchange space for artists, curators, critics, and the public.

In this field, Itaú Cultural organizes actions for enjoyment, education, and promotion, including solo and group exhibitions that take place both at its headquarters on 149 Avenida Paulista (with free admission) and at venues in Brazil’s five regions. Highlights of the 2025 exhibitions include Carlos Zilio – A querela do Brasil, curated by Paulo Miyada, which will present a retrospective of this artist who, with erudition and irreverence, explored the tensions of Brazilian art. Exhibitions will also be dedicated to the visual artist Rivane Neuenschwander and the curator and critic Paulo Herkenhoff.

Visit itaucultural.org.br to browse the virtual exhibitions Filmes e vídeos de artistas, with experimental audiovisual works, and Livros de artista na Coleção Itaú Cultural, whose immersive and interactive features allow for detailed appreciation. At Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural (enciclopedia.itaucultural.org.br) you can access hundreds of entries on figures, works, and events in the visual arts.

Being present at the Bienal de São Paulo reinforces our goal of building links with different audiences, valuing the diversity of formats, thoughts, and subjectivities, and fostering creative and critical thinking through Brazilian art and culture.

Itaú Cultural

Bloomberg is proud to sponsor the 36th edition of the Bienal de São Paulo. For more than a decade we have supported the Bienal’s exceptional contemporary art exhibitions in the stunning Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion in Ibirapuera Park and around Brazil, through our partnership with Fundação Bienal. This year’s edition continues the tradition of presenting captivating and thought-provoking art installations that are free and open to the public.

Every day, Bloomberg connects influential decision-makers to a dynamic network of information, people, and ideas. With more than 19,000 employees in 176 offices, Bloomberg delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world. Our dedication to innovation and new ideas extends to our longstanding support of arts, which we believe are a valuable way to engage citizens and strengthen communities. Through our funding, we help increase access to culture and empower artists and cultural organizations to reach broader audiences.

Bloomberg

For Bradesco, a Brazilian bank par excellence that has just celebrated its 83rd anniversary, art and culture are not only fundamental elements in the formation of a people’s identity or the construction of their intangible heritage, but also a journey of inclusion and citizenship, a healthy convergence of different points of view. It is, so to speak, a journey toward the new, but with the care to value what is special enough to be history or tradition.

Therefore, when it comes to art and culture, the boundaries between past, present, and future, between form and content, become meaningless. Everything becomes reflection and learning, everything becomes provocation and surprise.

It was on the basis of this interpretation, combined with the positive view of the role of companies in making possible what society considers important, that Bradesco became a sponsor of the 36th edition of the Bienal de São Paulo, undoubtedly one of the most important events in the country aimed at promoting the arts scene, publicizing the various expressions of art, and promoting cultural exchange, with all the good that this brings.

By participating in something that is both great and multifaceted, Bradesco shares with the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo – which has organized the event for more than six decades – the goal of democratizing access to culture, multiplying its reach and promoting the appreciation of art.

It’s a path with no end, no turning back, full of challenges and at least one certainty: the more people who take part, the better!

Bradesco

Petrobras has a history of more than forty years of continuously believing in culture as a transformational element and a source of energy for society. By supporting unique projects and longterm partnerships, we have built a relationship of respect and collaboration with producers and initiatives all over the country.

The Petrobras Cultural Program has Brazilianness as its guiding element, which is materialized in the themes, origins, curatorship, history, and characteristics of each project we select. By supporting different projects, we put into practice our belief that culture is an important energy that transforms society. We believe that through creativity and inspiration we promote growth and change.

The Bienal de São Paulo is one of the sector’s most prestigious events in the country and the world. Petrobras’s sponsorship reinforces the company’s role in promoting culture in its various forms, consolidating its position as one of the biggest supporters of the arts in Brazil.

Events such as the Bienal de São Paulo make a significant contribution to the economy, promoting innovation, creativity, and sustainability in the economic dynamic. Petrobras is an ally of Brazil’s development in its various sectors. It invests in many forms of energy, and culture is certainly one of them.

Petrobras is proud to support Brazilian culture in its plurality of manifestations, taking art to all audiences, all over the country. Because culture is also our energy.

To find out more about the Petrobras Cultural Program, visit petrobras.com.br/cultura.

Petrobras

Instituto Cultural Vale believes in the transformative power of culture. As one of the main supporters of culture in Brazil, it sponsors and promotes projects that foster connections between people, initiatives, and territories. Its commitment is to make culture increasingly accessible and diverse, while also contributing to the strengthening of the creative economy.

It is therefore a pleasure to be part of the realization of this 36th Bienal de São Paulo and its educational program, which explores new formats and approaches. Developed from the Invocations proposed by the curatorial team – encounters with poetry, music, performances, and debates that explore notions of humanity across different geographies – the educational program expands the Bienal’s communication with diverse audiences and extends its reach beyond the exhibition space and timeframe, in an interdisciplinary way.

With each new edition, the Bienal invites us to rethink art as an exercise in dialogue, in openness to new narratives, and as a space for learning. In this sense, it aligns with the purpose of the Instituto Cultural Vale: to expand opportunities for learning, reflection, new perspectives, and the sharing of art, culture, and education – both inside and outside museums, throughout Brazil.

Where there is culture, Vale is there.

Instituto Cultural Vale

For 110 years, Citi has been part of Brazil’s history, accompanying its transformations and driving its development. Our journey is intertwined with that of the country: we are both witnesses to and participants in a Brazil that constantly reinvents itself and moves forward.

More than a financial institution, we believe in the power of culture and education as engines for a more inclusive, innovative, and sustainable future. Investing in these pillars also means celebrating the diversity, creativity, and talent that define the Brazilian spirit.

With this commitment, we are proud, for the first time, to support the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – one of the most important spaces for artistic expression in Latin America, where Brazil thinks, feels, and reinvents itself through art.

We believe in art as an agent of social transformation. Artistic creation has the power to spark dialogue, expand horizons, and inspire new possibilities for the world. By sponsoring the Bienal, we reaffirm our commitment to culture, innovation, and all those who, through art, are building new narratives for both the present and the future.

Citi

Vivo believes in culture as a means of social transformation and is one of the most important brands supporting the visual and performing arts and music in Brazil. Art, like technology, creates connections between people and encourages the search for balance between history, nature, and time.

Vivo is currently a sponsor of the most important museums in Brazil, such as the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP), the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, the Museu da Imagem e do Som (MIS-SP), the Museu Afro Brasil Emanoel Araujo, the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), as well as the Instituto Inhotim and the Palácio das Artes, both in Minas Gerais, and the Museu Oscar Niemeyer, in Paraná.

Teatro Vivo, located in São Paulo, offers a curated selection of contemporary plays that promote reflection on current issues and value cultural diversity. In addition, it is a fully accessible space, offering resources such as translation into Libras (Brazilian sign language), audio descriptions, and trained staff, ensuring inclusion for people with disabilities and reduced mobility. In 2024, it welcomed over 50,000 people.

The brand also supports projects in the world of music that are genuinely Brazilian and regional, reinforcing its proximity with local culture at iconic and traditional events in our country, such as the Parintins Festival, Galo da Madrugada, the Çairé Festival, Lollapalooza, The Town, and Vivo Música.

The brand’s initiatives in the cultural sphere broaden access to knowledge with new ways of experiencing and learning, strengthened by the aspects of diversity, sustainability, inclusion, and education. All information is gathered and shared on the @vivo.cultura and @vivo Instagram profiles.

Vivo

Confronted with the incessant problems of humanity, perhaps it is worth dwelling a little longer on some open questions, taking sustenance from resources that allow us to dig and build answers procedurally. In this sense, art, in its many guises, offers fertile ground for critical elaborations about the world and ourselves.

The meeting of art and education – both understood as fields of knowledge – enables the torsion of time and space: it becomes possible, thus, to suspend neutralities and dilate what is precipitated in structures. How far is this approach able to infer the real and interfere in it? It allows us to (re)populate imaginaries, to unpick the universalizing statute attributed to concepts, practices, and people, and thus to carve out reality with narratives that articulate the individual and the collective, in a procedural and coherent manner regarding the issues that permeate existence.

It is according to this panorama that Sesc São Paulo and the Fundação Bienal, through the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, reiterate their long-standing partnership, a mutual commitment to fostering experiences of coexistence with the visual arts, expanding access to cultural actions and the exercise of otherness.

This partnership, which has been established and renewed for over a decade, has led to the promotion of projects such as simultaneous exhibitions, public meetings, seminars, and training for educators, as well as the consolidated itinerant exhibition with excerpts from the Bienal in Sesc units in the wider state of São Paulo. The confluence of choices and propositions is part of the institutional perspective of culture as a right, and conceives, together with one of the largest exhibitions in the country, an accessible horizon for contemporary art in Brazil.

Sesc São Paulo

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

62 Chapter 2

Grammars of Defiances

64 Suchitra Mattai

66 Ana Raylander Mártis dos Anjos

68 Mansour Ciss Kanakassy

70 Emeka Ogboh

72 Minia Biabiany

74 Forensic Architecture/ Forensis

76 Ruth Ige

78 Theo Eshetu

80 Adjani Okpu-Egbe

82 Noor Abed

84 Aline Baiana

86 Song Dong

88 Theresah Ankomah

90 Olu Oguibe

92 Leo Asemota

94 Chapter 3

Of Spatial Rhythms and Narrations

96 Tanka Fonta 98 Otobong Nkanga

Leiko Ikemura 102 Moffat Takadiwa

Cevdet Erek 106 Nari Ward 108 Manauara Clandestina

110 Amina Agueznay

112 Marlene Almeida

114 Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn

116 Christopher Cozier

118 Akinbode Akinbiyi

120 Wolfgang Tillmans

122 Pélagie Gbaguidi

124 Raven Chacon, Iggor Cavalera, and Laima Leyton

126 Pol Taburet

128 Cynthia Hawkins

130 Márcia Falcão

132 Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide)

134 Alain Padeau

136

Chapter 4

Currents of Nurturing and Plural Cosmologies

138 Laure Prouvost

140 Kader Attia

142 Myrlande Constant

144 Joar Nango with the Girjegumpi crew

146 Vilanismo

148 Gervane de Paula

150 Sharon Hayes

152 Trương Công Tung

154 Lidia Lisbôa

156 Hao Jingban

158 Meriem Bennani

160 Juliana dos Santos

162 Sadikou Oukpedjo

164 Olivier Marboeuf

166 Camille Turner

168 Simnikiwe Buhlungu

170 Julianknxx

172 Hamedine Kane

174 Sérgio Soarez

176 Leonel Vásquez

178 Helena Uambembe

180 Ernest Cole

182 Metta Pracrutti

184 Kenzi Shiokava

186 Leila Alaoui

188 Shuvinai Ashoona

190 Myriam Omar Awadi

192 Chapter 5

Cadences of Transformations

194 Antonio Társis

196 Ming Smith

198 Théodore Diouf

200 Berenice Olmedo

202 Hajra Waheed

204 Zózimo Bulbul

206 Nguyễn Trinh Thi

208 Mao Ishikawa

210 Michele Ciacciofera

212 Josèfa Ntjam

214 Lynn Hershman Leeson

216 Richianny Ratovo

218 Cici Wu with Yuan Yuan

220 Laila Hida

222 Korakrit Arunanondchai

224 Maxwell Alexandre

226 Isa Genzken

228 Werewere Liking

230 María Magdalena Campos-Pons

232 Chapter 6

The Intractable Beauty of the World

234 Bertina Lopes

236 Maria Auxiliadora

238 Chaïbia Talal

240 Thania Petersen

242 Hamid Zénati

244 Mohamed Melehi

246 Edival Ramosa

248 Imram Mir

250 Hessie

252 Gōzō Yoshimasu

254 Firelei Báez

256 Farid Belkahia

258 Madiha Umar

260 Ernest Mancoba

262 Moisés Patrício

264 I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih (Murni)

266 Behjat Sadr

268 Forugh Farrokhzad

270 Nzante Spee

272 Huguette Caland

274 Frankétienne

276 Heitor dos Prazeres

278 Adama Delphine Fawundu

280 Aislan Pankararu

282 Raukura Turei

284 Rebeca Carapiá

286 Kamala Ibrahim Ishag

288 Andrew Roberts

290 Alberto Pitta

Marrakech

Guadeloupe

Casa do Povo

Marcelo Evelin

Boxe Autônomo and Dorothée Munyaneza

Alexandre Paulikevitch and MEXA

La Cinémathèque

Not All Travellers Walk Roads

Of Humanity as Practice A Concept

in Three Fragments

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

February, 2024

Disclaimer: This Bienal is not about identities and their politics, not about diversity nor inclusion, not about migration nor democracy and its failures…

Claimer: It is about humanity as a verb and a practice, about encounter(s) and the negotiations upon the meeting of varying worlds, it is about dismantling asymmetries as a prerequisite for humanity as a practice, it is about joy and beauty and their poeticalities as the gravitational forces that keep our worlds on their axes… for joy and beauty are political. It is about imagining a world in which we place an accent on our humanities.

Fragment I – Da calma e do silêncio

Quando eu morder a palavra, por favor, não me apressem, quero mascar, rasgar entre os dentes, a pele, os ossos, o tutano do verbo, para assim versejar o âmago das coisas.

Quando meu olhar se perder no nada, por favor, não me despertem, quero reter, no adentro da íris, a menor sombra, do ínfimo movimento.

Quando meus pés abrandarem na marcha, por favor, não me forcem. Caminhar para quê?

Deixem-me quedar, deixem-me quieta, na aparente inércia. Nem todo viandante anda estradas, há mundos submersos, que só o silêncio da poesia penetra.

[When I bite the word, please, don’t rush me, I want to chew, tear between my teeth, the skin, the bones, the marrow

of the verb, so I might versify the core of things.

When my gaze gets lost in nothingness, please, don’t wake me, I want to retain, within the depth of the iris, the faintest shadow, of the slightest movement.

When my feet slow their march, please, don’t push me. To walk – what for? Let me stay, let me be still, in apparent inertia. Not all travellers walk roads, there are submerged worlds that only the silence of poetry penetrates.]

Conceição Evaristo, “Da calma e do silêncio” [Of Calm and Silence]1

The concept for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo is a proposal to think, listen to, see, feel, perceive the world from the vantage point of Brazil – its histories, landscapes, philosophies, mythologies, and complexities – for the fiction that is Brazil is a culmination of many worlds and their tangents. That said, the emphasis will be laid on listening as the fundamental ground for practicing humanity. As Jacques Attali wrote in his seminal essay Noise: The Political Economy of Music, “for twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It

1. Conceição Evaristo, “Da calma e do silêncio,” in Poemas da recordação e outros movimentos. Rio de Janeiro: Malê, 2008, p.122.

is not legible, but audible.”2 We seem to have inherited a world crafted by people who have tried to see the world and read the world. One could say that, to conjugate humanity as a verb, one must learn to listen to the world, listen to lands, listen to plants and animals, listen to people, listen to the voices of the waves that caress the shores, to the grumbling of waters, to the winds that carve the sand and the contours of the earth, listen to the murmurs of stones and hills and mountains, listen to the plethora of beings that make up our estuaries. It is safe to say that there is a correlation between the impossibilities of listening and dehumanization, as well as the disenfranchisement of people, the appropriation of lands, and ultimately the destruction of the environment.

In this proposal, the physical and philosophical space of the estuary will be used as a metaphor for spaces of encounter, of negotiations, of exchange, of living, of survival, of nourishment, of struggle, of despair, of repair, of rehabilitation, of needs… spaces in which practices of humanity could acquire new meanings.

From the Santos Estuary or the Bertioga Estuary in São Paulo to the Capibaribe Estuary in Recife and the Patos Lagoon Estuary that extends from Porto Alegre to Rio Grande, the moment when two waterways meet each other, like a river meeting the sea, is a moment of negotiation of physical and chemical asymmetries that creates an extraordinary ecosystem flourishing with crabs, crocodiles, fish, migratory birds, mangroves, oysters, phytoplankton, snails, seagrass, sea turtles, zooplankton, and even humans. The particularity of an estuary is its interdependence. Each being has a role, a niche (for example, the niche of oysters is filtration, with each oyster filtering up to 50 gallons of water per day), in the sustenance of each species, in the ecosystem at large, and in the blossoming biodiversity, especially thanks to the varying salinity levels that arise when sweet water meets salty water. Estuaries are thus important for a vast spectrum of beings as habitat, resource, space for reproduction or transition in our ecosystems, and their existences are crucial for our environments. Estuaries serve as coastal buffers in times of erosions, floodings, or storms, just as they help in filtering freshwater. But due to massive urbanization, dredging, overfishing, pollution, oil

2. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Transl. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.

and gas drilling etc. on a planetary scale, the ecosystems of estuaries are losing balance, just as humanity is losing its grip on itself and the world.3 By invoking the plurality of beings and their co-existence and contingencies within that space of the estuary as a metaphor for human relations with themselves and others, the project tangentially alludes to the 27th Bienal de São Paulo in 2006, titled How to Live Together and curated by Lisette Lagnado, as well as the 2nd Bienal, in 1953 (also called “Guernica Bienal”), in terms of the agencies and urgencies at stake.

So when Conceição Evaristo writes in “Da calma e do silêncio” that “Not all travellers/ walk roads/ there are submerged worlds/ that only the silence/ of poetry penetrates,” one can think of estuaries as the epitome of those submerged worlds penetrable by the silence of nature’s poetry and at the same time as the path of coexistence that is woven when the different worlds of sweet and salty water encounter each other, as a path that humankind as travellers could take. Brazil was birthed by the violent encounter of Indigenous people, European colonizers and enslaved Africans. Every civilization stems from an encounter, no matter how violent some might be, and some take more time than others to germinate. For the germination and proper cultivation to happen, one might need patience to bite and tear words to the marrow of verbs, stamina to stare into the distance so that clarity of the smallest movements in the far can be impregnated inside one’s iris, as Evaristo insinuates. So which paths do we take in the practice of humanity as a verb? How do we afford ourselves the privilege of going off track, off the road, embracing errancy, getting lost, finding other worlds?

Fragment II – Une Conscience en fleur pour autrui

Ma joie est de savoir que tu es moi et que moi je suis fortement toi. Tu sais que ton froid dessèche mes os et que mon chaud vivifie tes veines. Ma peur fait trembler tes yeux

3. Emily Caffrey, “The Importance of Estuarine Ecosystems,” Ocean Blue Project. Available at: oceanblueproject.org/whatis-an-estuary. Access: 2025.

et ta faim fait pâlir ma bouche. Sans ta force d’être un feu libre ma conscience serait plus seule que la terre morte d’un désert. Ma vie offre des clefs émerveillées à la perception de ta propre essence. Lorsque tu veilles sur ma liberté tu donnes un ciel et des ailes au mouvement de mon espérance. Mon désir d’être heureux, s’il cessait un instant de compter avec le tien tomberait aussitôt en poussière. Quand tu saignes au couteau mon identité nos consciences vont ensemble à l’abattoir.

[My joy is knowing that you are me, and that I am deeply you. You know your cold dries out my bones, and my warmth brings life to your veins. My fear makes your eyes tremble, and your hunger pales my mouth. Without your power to be a free flame, my awareness would be more alone than the dead earth of a desert. My life offers enchanted keys to the perception of your very essence. When you guard my liberty, you give wings and sky to the motion of my hope. My longing to be happy – should it cease to reckon with your own, even for a moment –would fall at once to dust.

When you cut my identity with a knife, our minds go together to the slaughterhouse.]

René Depestre, “Une Conscience en fleur pour autrui” [A Blossoming Conscience for Others].4

The artist Leo Asemota once asked the question: when you look in the mirror, who do you see? He went ahead to respond himself that there is of course the possibility of seeing only yourself, but when he looks in the mirror, he sees all

4. René Depestre, En état de poésie (Petite sirène). Paris: Les éditeurs français réunis, 1980.

the people who came before him and all in his keeping. This spirit of vertical and horizontal interconnectedness might be another crucial element in the conjugation of humanity. In this era of deep political and social crisis in which we find ourselves in the world, the question of who we see when we look in the mirror becomes even more important. To see a multitude in the mirror is to recognize the existence, the concerns, and eventually care for the well-being. The nation-state is one of those constructs that seem to see only itself when it looks in the mirror. That’s why we fortify our borders with walls, fight wars, expel migrants, destroy the environment etc. Could we actually look into the mirror and see humanity? In all its shapes and colors, with all its long- and shortcomings, with all its shades of grey, and all its imperfections? As it stands, the mirror in which we seem to be stirring is shattered into pieces, and instead of a reflection we seem to be seeing infinite refractions that lead to oblivion. But even a broken mirror can be mended. To engage in that process of mending, however, one must allow oneself to be guided by and consent to René Depestre’s maxims in “Une Conscience en fleur pour autrui”: “My joy is knowing that you are me/ and that I am deeply you.” or “My life offers enchanted keys/ to the perception of your very essence.” Humanity is a practice. Humanity is a verb. It can be conjugated.

Fragment III – The Adamant Beauty of the World

Rising from the abyss is the sound of centuries. The song of Ocean’s valleys.

On the Atlantic Ocean floor sonorous seashells tangle with skulls, bones, and iron balls turned green. These depths hold the cemeteries of slave ships and of the many men who sailed them. Deeds of a greedy Western world, violated borders, flags raised and fallen. […]. But these transported Africans undid the separations of the world. They too opened up the Americas’ vast spaces with violent bloodshed. […]

The remains of these ancestors shipped away to become the silt of the abysses, all those former worlds, were ground down until they truly became a new place. One world made Africa laminary. The Africas impregnated distant worlds. This fact makes it possible to see the Whole-World and to comprehend it – the Tout-Monde given to everyone, valid for everyone, multiple in its totality, based on the sonorous abysses.

Édouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, “The Adamant Beauty of the World”5

The estuary of Recife is a space of multiple encounters. Not only the meeting of sweet and salt water, but also the first port in the Americas where enslaved people abducted from Africa encountered the so-called new world. Since its founding in 1537 upon Portuguese colonization, Recife has been a remarkable site in which that which has emerged from that abyss, that chasm, despite despicable violences, has been able to manifest its intractable, adamant beauty. A site in which the rumors from and of the depths of that abyss still resonate in all engulfing ripples and manifest themselves as that notion of Tout-Monde.

That “adamant beauty of the world” birthed, in Brazil, some of the most important artistic and cultural movements of the 20th century: the “anthropofagia movement” of the 1920s, that gave form to and informed a Brazilian avant-garde and led both to the “Manifesto Antropófago” and an aesthetics and politics that Oswald de Andrade called “Cannibalist transnationalism” (a philosophy that called for the cannibalization, the ingestion, and the digestion of other cultures as a way of asserting Brazil against European colonial and post-colonial cultural domination, as was so magnificently exposed in the 24th Bienal de São Paulo, curated by Paulo Herkenhoff with Adriano Pedrosa); the Teatro Experimental do Negro [Black Experimental Theater] (TEN), a movement founded by Abdias do Nascimento in 1944 to tackle the dearth of Black presence and dignity in the national performing arts, initiating a movement of Afro-Brazilian playwriting that also engaged politically by bringing the anti-racism struggles to the 1946 Constituent Assembly and 5. Édouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, “The Adamant Beauty of the World (2009),” in Manifestos. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2022.pp.33-55.

influencing “the proposition of the Afonso Arinos Act, the first legislation geared to curb racism;”6 the Cinema Novo’s “Eztetyka da Fome” [Aesthetics of Hunger] movement, filmically formulated by Glauber Rocha in 1965, understanding cinema as an important tool and weapon for the revolutionary struggle; the Tropicalismo movement of Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Tom Zé, and Torquato Neto in the 1960s, advocating with their Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis manifesto for a “field for reflection on social history” through music, film, and other artistic expressions that synchronized African and Brazilian cultures and found a political voice at the height of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship; or the Manguebit movement of the 1990s in Recife, that stood for a musical revolt against the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural stagnation, for a resistance to the neoliberal agenda that had usurped most of Latin America, that advocated for a cultural memory that embraced all the aforementioned attributes (“given in all, valid for all, multiple in its totality”), and that opted for a way-out of the socioeconomic cul-de-sac through a pidginization of sonic scapes and genres like makossa, Congolese rumba, reggae, coco, forró, maracatu, frevo, as much as rock, hip hop, electronic music, and funk. The Manguebit movement and its manifesto “Caranguejos com cérebro” [Crabs with Brains], written in 1992 by singer Fred Zero Quatro and DJ Renato L, were brought to life by two legendary bands and two albums from 1994 whose titles betray their intentions: Mundo Livre S/A’s Samba esquema noise [Samba Scheme Noise] and Chico Science & Nação Zumbi’s Da lama ao caos [From Mud to Chaos]. This is the crux of Fragment III.

In “Manguebit,” the very first song on Samba esquema noise, Mundo Livre S/A sings of the transistor, of Recife as a circuit and the country as a chip; they sing of Manguebit as a virus that contaminates the eyes, ears, languages, sound waves, and this virus is spread through UHF with the help of needle-antennas inserted in the mangrove in the estuaries. They sing of the land as radio and the destruction of the land and the tributaries. This was an anthem for the strange times then and now.

Chico Science & Nação Zumbi’s first song in Da lama ao caos, titled “Monólogo ao pé do ouvido (vinheta) / Banditismo por uma questão de classe,” is a fierce double

6. “O teatro dentro de mim,” Itaú Cultural, 2016. Available at: ocupacao.icnetworks.org/ocupacao/abdias-nascimento/oteatro-dentro-de-mim/

hymn of defiance. In “Monólogo ao pé do ouvido,” they sing of their movement as a musical evolution to modernize the past, they sing of how fear gives rise to evil and how the collective feels the need to fight against pride, arrogance, glory, and how demons destroy the fierce power of humanity: “Viva Zapata!/ Viva Sandino!/ Viva Zumbi!/ Antônio Conselheiro/ All Black Panthers/ Lampião.” And in “Banditismo por uma questão de classe” they tell a story of bandits, of the talk of solutions and progress, and how this can be done with the killing of innocent people by the forces of law and order. They sing of banditry as survival, as a necessity, as a consequence of class struggles. That these bands refer to a free world and to Zumbi’s nation in their names is no coincidence. That they are from Recife is no coincidence either. After all, it was in Recife that the I Congresso Afro-Brasileiro took place in 1934, including activists like Solano Trindade – who was, by the way, also part of the Frente Negra Pernambucana and the Teatro Experimental do Negro.7 And even more importantly, it was in the states of Pernambuco and Alagoas that the great Francisco Zumbi (1655–1695) of Kongo heritage, who went down in history as Zumbi dos Palmares, claimed his kingdom, fought against the Portuguese colonialists, resisted against the enslavement of Africans, freed his people, and resettled them in the kingdom of Maroons, the Quilombos, that Abdias do Nascimento was later to qualify as some of the first democratic spaces and structures in what is today Brazil. The Quilombos were the foundation on which movements like Manguebit could be built more than 300 years later.

Fragment III is a deliberation on the Manguebit movement and its manifesto “Caranguejos com cérebro,” understood as an exposé of a collective social brain.

In Michael Muthukrishna and Joseph Henrich’s 2016 paper “Innovation in the Collective Brain,” they reflect on something many in non-Western cultures have actually known since time immemorial:

Our societies and social networks act as collective brains. Individuals connected in collective brains, selectively transmitting and learning information, often well outside their conscious awareness,

7. Amurabi Oliveira, “Afro-Brazilian Studies in the 1930s: Intellectual Networks between Brazil and the USA,” Brasiliana: Journal for Brazilian Studies, v.8, n.1-2, 2019.

can produce complex designs without the need for a designer – just as natural selection does in genetic evolution. The processes of cumulative cultural evolution result in technologies and techniques that no single individual could recreate in their lifetime, and do not require its beneficiaries to understand how and why they work. Such cultural adaptations appear functionally well designed to meet local problems, yet they lack a designer.8

The authors elaborate on the origins and machinations of collective brains by discussing their “neurons” and pointing out how individual brains evolve in accordance with the acquisition of culture – the so-called cultural brains (brains that evolved primarily for the acquisition of adaptive knowledge). Which is to say that “our cultural brains evolved in tandem with our collective brains.”

Muthukrishna and Henrich show how “cultural brains are linked into collective brains that generate inventions and diffuse innovations,” as well as examine the ways in which “collective brains can feed-back to make each of their constituent cultural brains ‘smarter’ – or at least cognitively better equipped to deal with local challenges.”9 The threads with which the fabric, the cultural brain, the collective brain of Recife, of the “Caranguejos com cérebro” were woven span from the encounter of the different worlds that were forced to cross paths almost 500 years ago, as well as the different social entities, from the family to the plantation to the samba school, to different social networks. As Muthukrishna and Henrich point out,

the most basic structure of the collective brain is the family. Young cultural learners first gain access to their parents, and possibly a range of alloparents (aunts, grand-fathers, etc.). Families are embedded in larger groups, which may take many forms, from egalitarian hunter-gatherers to villages, clans, and “big man” societies, from chiefdoms to states with different degrees of democracy, free-markets and welfare systems, to large unions.10

8. Michael Muthukrishna and Joseph Henrich, “Innovation in the Collective Brain,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Mar. 19, 2016. Available at: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2015.0192. Access: 2025.

9. Ibid., p.10.

10. Ibid., p.10.

Next to the people, the geographical and geological bearings of Recife also play an important role in the manifestation of that cultural and collective brain that birthed the Manguebit movement. Recife is situated at the confluence of the Beberibe and Capibaribe rivers, as they proceed in their majesty to empty themselves in that massive body of water, the South Atlantic Ocean, from whose belly, from whose vault, the voices still sing. Topography and climate also contribute in the making of knowledge. With its tropical forest, high rainfall, its monsoon climate, its estuaries, high relative humidity, Recife has been called the daughter of the mangrove, with its Parque dos Manguezais that too lends its name to Manguebit. But this natural, ecological richness of Recife which could be a dream for some became a nightmare for the people of Recife. In Alice de Souza’s article “Life Reborn in the Mud,”11 she writes about Ilha de Deus [God’s Island], an island of Recife that had been generally neglected to its decrepitude in the 1970s and 1980s – there was no water, no electricity, no attention from the government. In the middle of these dire sociopolitical and economic conditions, the island was called Ilha sem Deus [Godless Island]. As if the neglect of Ilha de Deus wasn’t enough, in 1983, two nearby factories provoked an environmental disaster by dumping waste from soap production into the water, thereby intoxicating fish and sea plants, which were the main means of subsistence in the area. This lead to starvation and mass exodus of the islanders in search of greener pastures. At the same time, criminality skyrocketed on the island, which had become a hiding place for gangs. This was not restricted to Ilha de Deus, as the ruthless construction in Recife, the intoxication of the environment by industries, the dumping of waste in the rivers, and the perishing of lives in the city’s mangroves (that had become oversaturated with plastic and other wastes) led to an auto-suffocation. If the rivers and estuaries of Recife were the veins and arteries of the place, then the city was suffering from a terrible thrombosis. It was against this backdrop that the Manguebit movement emerged as a cultural revolution in the 1990s, basically to say “No more,” accompanied by several environmental groups that planned to replant mangrove seedlings, folding sleeves and going knee-deep into the mud to clear the estu-

11. Alice de Souza, “Life Reborn in the Mud,” Believe Earth, Nov. 17, 2017. Available at: believe.earth/en/life-reborn-in-themud/. Access: 2025.

aries from plastic.12 This new movement came with a new sound: Manguebit.

Fragment III of this Bienal will pay homage to the Manguebit movement, as a descendant of all the great movements that ever came out of Brazil. As Melcion Mateu writes in his essay “Nação Zumbi: Two Decades of ‘Crabs with Brains’ (and Still Hungry)”:

The term “manguebit” is itself a hybrid, portmanteau word containing a reference to local landscape (“mangue” as said, “mangrove swamp,” “marshland”) and global technology (“bit” or binary digit, as in computer science): a movement rooted in its landscape but connected to the global technology […]. A parabolic antenna put in the mud became the concept image to describe a movement that aspired to connect the local culture to the global scene.13

Which is to say that the Manguebit is a conceptual paradigm that brings together the notions of maternity, fertility, diversity and productivity with the notion of a technology, digital media or computation that can facilitate syncretism, that can bridge the gap not only across the Atlantic, but between those that survived on land and those still locked up in that abyss. Technology in this context serves a double purpose of connecting but also subverting. Manguebit should also be understood as the possibility of creating technologies, sciences, and arts that not only reflect the quotidian, but are also fundamental for the subversions of the terrors of normativity. The technologies and sciences that were conceived to disprivilege the masses are actually misappropriated and perverted from their original purposes, in what we might call weapons of mass subversion.

The Manguebit manifesto “Caranguejos com cérebro” directly relates to the people of Recife, who are colloquially referred to as crabs living in the mangrove. Crabs, like some other lobsters and shrimps, are known to be masters of navigation of their territories and even territories unknown, since they have a sophisticated memory. They have been found to have the cognitive capacity for complex learning

12. Idem.

13. Melcion Mateu, “Nação Zumbi: Two Decades of ‘Crabs with Brains’ (and Still Hungry),” Crítica Latinoamericana, Dec. 5, 2012.

despite their rudimentary brains. In the article “Clever Crustaceans,” Erica Westly states that crabs “can remember the location of a seagull attack and learn to avoid that area. In mammals, this kind of behavior requires multiple brain regions, but a study published in the June issue of the Journal of Neuroscience suggests that the C. granulatus crab can manage with just a few neurons.”14 The experiments made by neuroscientists at the Universidad de Buenos Aires to test the memory skills of crabs showed that they could retain information for more than 24 hours, which is the clinical benchmark for long-term memory in most animals, including humans. And even more: they showed the ability to apply their acquired knowledge for their well-being and survivor. The researchers attributed this behavior to the crabs’ lobula giant neurons, that might have the possibility of storing information about different stimuli. It is known that crabs learn from their mistakes, that they are ambidextrous, that they have a sense of compassion that leads them to protect their territory, and that crab mothers are very caring, and are said to place snail shells around their young ones to increase their calcium intake. This is an invitation for artists, scholars, and people from varying walks of life to reflect on the social and cultural brain of the collective, which embodies the ambidexterity, intelligence, and prudence of the crabs as a way of being in the world, as a way of being better humans. This is also an invitation for them to deliberate on spaces like estuaries and mangroves, spaces that are evidence of solidarity, a coexistence of a variety of beings, plants, animals, and mycelia that mostly assist and subsist each other, if left alone by the human. So, if such creatures with what we, humans, might call “primitive brains” could exercise such proficient memories and such compassion, why can’t humans? Or can they? The relationship between crabs and humans that is central to the Manguebit movement had already been described in Josué de Castro’s seminal novel Of Men and Crabs, published in 1967. By then, Josué de Castro had earned fame for his path-breaking ecological work on the politics of hunger titled The Geography of Hunger, published in 1946. Being a physician in Recife, De Castro had done studies with workers’ and declared that their “basal

14. Erica Westly, “Clever Crustaceans,” Scientific American Mind, v.22, n.5, Nov. 2011, p.14.

disease” was hunger, that manifested itself clinically as anemia, protein-calorie malnutrition, and more. He linked the socio-economic realities of the people of Recife to their biological manifestation of hunger. In his later work Of Men and Crabs, written while in exile in Paris, he tells a fictional tale of poverty related to his childhood, narrating the tragic life of the young João Paulo. The author interweaves the story of the pathetic condition of all the people around the boy with the story of Father Aristides, whose craving for the guaiamum crabs is insatiable. In that space of exile, and hopelessness, De Castro gifted the world a book that paints the reality of “the wretched of the earth.” It is no surprise that the main character João Paulo disappears during a disastrous flood that literally erases the whole settlement. But as De Castro writes, what we take with us is, “humans fashioned of crab meat, thinking and feeling like crabs; amphibians, at home on land and in water, half-man, half-animal; fed, in their infancy, on that miry milk, crab broth.”15

These relationalities of beings across land and waters, those in the swamps, so playfully and critically put forth by Mundo Livre S/A and Chico Science & Nação Zumbi, these relationalities between different genres, between gods and humans and other existences put forth by Mário de Andrade, these relationalities proposed by De Castro, these relationalities that mediate the rumors from several centuries ago to the rumors of today, that negotiate between the voices in the vault and the voices of those who are still surviving… all these relations speak to an exhaustive and resilient brain: the Mangue brain. The first Mangue manifesto, “Caranguejos com cérebro,” was structured as a trilogy: “Mangue – The Concept,” “Manguetown –The City,” “Mangue – The Scene”… Now we can imagine “Mangue – The Exhibition.” An exhibition that negates the Darwinian notion of survival of the fittest, but advocates for co-existence, interdependence, love, joy, beauty as the basis for the intractable, adamant beauty of the world.

15. Josué de Castro, Of Men and Crabs. Trans. by Susan Hertelendy. New York: Vanguard, 1970.

Structure

Exhibition/Manifestation: the exhibition brings together artists from the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania, working across disciplines and experimenting on content and container to have their works manifest in the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion. A special emphasis will be laid on sonic practices.

Invocations/Tributaries: staying true to the metaphor of the estuary, the tributary as a concept is evoked here to connote the spaces through which one waterbody flows into another. In this project, Tributaries are cultural programs that have been developed with institutions in São Paulo and around the world that will host discursive and performative formats (lectures, workshops, poetry, music, installations, performances). The programs that take place in the run-up to the Bienal exhibition are called Invocations, and those that take place in parallel are called Tributaries. The deliberations from the Invocations will inform the manifestations at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion and Ibirapuera Park. They are a tangential reference to the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo in 2016, curated by Jochen Volz, wherein Study Days were organized in four cities around the world.

Public Program: the public program is furnished with a series of performances, sonic gestures, storytelling sessions, and lectures. At the core of the public program will be the “Radio du conte vivant,” reminiscent of the Mobile Radio project of the 30th Bienal de São Paulo in 2012, curated by Luis Pérez-Oramas and titled The Imminence of Poetics. But “Radio du conte vivant” takes its cue from the seminal lecture of Patrick Chamoiseau16 with the title “Circonfession esthetique – le conteur, la nuit et le panier” [Aesthetic Circonfession – The Storyteller, the Night, and the Basket], wherein the author discusses the importance of “oraliture” as a core narrative strategy in Caribbean cultures, employing “tales, word games, rhymes, riddles, songs, a popular philosophy carried by proverbs […].” He adds that “transmission is therefore essentially done without many words, through proximity, observation, imitation, sensation, humility, and that dose of unconsciousness that is necessary to aspire to become a master of the word.”

16. Patrick Chamoiseau, “Discours inaugural de la Chaire d’écrivain en résidence,” Sciences Po, Paris, Jan. 27, 2020.

Educational program: so storytelling as a practice of conjugating humanity will be the modus operandi for the public and educational programs, and that goes in line with what Chinua Achebe said when asked in a 1998 interview “what is the importance of stories.” He responded:

Well, it is story(telling) that makes us human. And that’s why we insist. Whenever we are in doubt about who we are, we go to stories because this is one thing that we have done in the human race. There is no group that doesn’t do it. It seems to be central to the very nature, to the very fact of our humanity to tell who we are. And to let that story keep us in mind of this. Because there will be days when we are not quite sure whether we are human or even more commonly whether other people are human. It is in the story that we get this continuity of this affirmation that you are human and that your humanity is contingent on the humanity of your neighbor.17

Choir: an important part of both public and educational programs is the creation of “The Tout Moun Choir” for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, as well as collaborations with local choirs. The choir owes its name to the maxim of the Haitian revolution, “Tout Moun Se Moun,” that pronounces every human as equal, that declares that every human is a human and therefore has the right to be treated as such with the required respect and dignity. Choirs are the epitome of collective interdependence.

Adoption of artworks: citizens are invited to adopt artworks in the cause of the exhibition. By doing so, they have access to the artists and can also serve as mediators between the artworks and the audiences.

17. “Nigerian Author Chinua Achebe in 1998,” New York State Writers Institute, Oct. 1998. Available at: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=vKDupjm2fU8. Access: 2025.

Chapter 1 Frequencies of Landings and Belongings

The exhibition opens with a cluster of works that connects the exhibition to sounds, sights, textures, and energies of Ibirapuera Park. The works in this chapter thematize the generativeness and agency of soil and land, the grounding of soil, and humanity’s connection to and dependence on soil. The soil from which we are made and the soil to which we must eventually go back into. In an age of extractivism, to reflect on soil and land at large becomes an urgency, as humanity has played a significant part in the destruction of lands and the environment. Imagine embarking on a walk through these sound-, smell-, and touchscapes, sight- and landscapes with Mateus Aleluia’s “O serpentear da natureza” [The Meander of Nature] (from his Fogueira doce [Sweet Bonfire] album), or Büşra Kayikçi’s “Into the Woods” (from her Places album). To conjugate humanity means healing the land, repairing our relationship to it, and being with the land and nature at large. While conflicts ravage across the globe related to the question of ownership of land(s), we must acknowledge that we do not own the land but the land owns us.

This shift implies the human is but a small part of the pluriverse that must exist in relation with other beings rather than in competition. The works in this chapter also speak to the notions of longing for physical, social, cultural, and psychological bearings

that define our belongings. Belonging to places, communities, social structures beyond the nation-state. Belonging to each other and to the world. Listening as a practice is a foregrounding element of this chapter, as to conjugate humanity we must not only listen carefully to each other but to all beings in the world. Belonging to one another and to the world requires a profound engagement that transcends mere words. In this chapter, listening emerges as a visceral practice that demands our full embodiment. To truly conjugate our shared humanity, we must attune ourselves not only to the voices of those around us but also to the silent rhythms of all beings with whom we coexist. A kind of listening rooted in our bodies; it requires us to be present, to feel the energy in a room, and to acknowledge the unspoken dialogues that exist in our shared spaces. Listening as a prerequisite for any acts of liberation and emancipation, listening as a foundation of quilombismo, listening as the catalyst of being in relation.

The exhibition here is a space in active dialogue with the Park and all the vibrations that emanate from it.

Precious Okoyomon

What might moments of calm and quiet look like amidst the bubbling and buzzing effervescence gathered around an event like the Bienal de São Paulo? What spaces of collective rest could be envisioned, and how could they shape the audience’s experience as their bodies swarm and sway across the alleys full of artworks?

As a response to the curatorial statement of this year’s edition of the Bienal, Nigerian-American artist Precious Okoyomon proposes an installation titled Sun of Consciousness. God Blow Thru Me – Love Break Me (2025), a piece that spatially reappropriates and reconfigures part of the Cicillo Matarazzo Pavilion. Known for their bold and imposing installations, Okoyomon’s practice lies at the intersection between poetry, food, and installation, merging sound with living and decaying materials such as rocks, plants, trees, and moss, among others. Effortlessly moving within several disciplines, Okoyomon wears several hats, sometimes acting as a visual artist, poet, chef, composer, and film director among others, with poetry and words acting as the red thread. As the artist often expressed in several interviews, most of the poems were written before they started making objects, and these poems have formed the seeds of their artworks.

the sun eats her children, 2023. Installation view at Sant’Andrea De Scaphis, Rome. Photo: Daniele Majoli. © Precious Okoyomon. Courtesy of the artist, Sant’Andrea De Scaphis, and Gladstone Gallery.

Highlighting the vulnerability of our human condition and the complex, intricate, and inextricable relationship we share with other-than-human entities, Okoyomon, in this commissioned piece, applies a metaphorical lens to the cerrado desert and its seemingly chaotic and fragile ecosystem, drawing parallels between one of Brazil’s largest biomes and humanity. Chaos here, as often ascribed to nature or humanity, does not refer to some sort of cacophony or disorder. Rather, it refers to the symbiotic and unpredictable relationships resulting from the multiple and interdependent encounters between the different animate and inanimate beings, which likewise form the backbone of the cerrado and our societies. What Édouard Glissant refers to as the Chaos-Monde1 in his reappraisal of cultural choc and encounters.

Echoing the famously known Pidgin English adage “Bodi no be fayawood,” the piece Sun of Consciousness. God Blow Thru Me – Love Break Me also emphasizes the need to embrace rest and refuge as a productive site, particularly in a world constantly evolving and paced by the capitalistic enterprise.

Billy Fowo

1. Interview with Yan Ciret published in Chroniques de la scène monde. Paris: Éditions La Passe du Vent, 2000.

ONE EITHER LOVES ONESELF OR KNOWS ONESELF, 2025. View of the solo exhibition the world requires something of me and I’m looking for a place to lie down at Kunsthaus Bregenz. Photo: Markus Tretter. © Precious Okoyomon, Kunsthaus Bregenz.

See The

To

Earth Before the End of the World, 2022. Installation view at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams, 2022. Photo: Clelia Cadamuro. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Gê Viana

At the crossroads of faith, sound, and belonging, Gê Viana investigates the vibrations that sustain Black and Indigenous communities, in which music is not just a cultural expression but a historical inscription charged with insubordination. Her research starts from experience and unfolds like a living narrative, connecting bodies, territories, and affections by interweaving real and fictional memories. In this way, the artist dismantles scenes crystallized in official historiography and expands readings on cultural heritage in Brazil. Articulating a visual and sound archaeology that reconstructs fragments of records – within the hegemonic discourse or in the popular imagination – she creates works that become symbols of resistance. By challenging colonial narratives, Viana rescues the dignity of marginalized populations and creates an affectionate practice that moves between the analogue and the digital. Her works displace the marks of racial violence and establish meanings of imaginative liberation, something that Édouard Glissant called “overcoming colonial trauma.” The radiolas of Maranhão, the beats of reggae, and the drums of the terreiros emerge as sensitive layers in her works, resonating with memories that defy historical silencing. The Maranhão reggae tradition, captured by the artist’s senses, reveals itself as a genre that, although marginalized, has built its own territory, rooted in the Black diasporas and the struggle for permanence. Powerful sound systems and ancestral rhythms structure her work, in which noises, echoes, and pulsations act as insurgent forces that intone community celebrations, forming a fabric that transcends the aesthetic experience: they are traces of a collective trajectory that defies oblivion.

Mastro do Divino Espírito Santo – Festa de Pai Honório, Casa Nossa Senhora de Sant’Ana, Paço do Lumiar, MA [Mast of the Holy Spirit – Pai Honório Festival, Casa Nossa Senhora de Sant'Ana, Paço do Lumiar, MA], 2025. Black-and- white photograph.

Beyond the harmonic impact, her practice carries a non-negotiable political commitment. Her images evoke the past of diasporas but without fixing these bodies in pain – on the contrary, she inserts them into poetic universes of fabrication, resistance, and futurity. Her creations operate as portals where time blurs and the echoes of other stories can still be heard.

The fusion between archive and speculative creation reveals a search for interrupted continuities, for buried narratives that insist on emerging. With each juxtaposition of images, with each displacement of an old photograph onto a new medium, the artist builds a cartography in which all times vibrate together and the future is not just a wait, but a call to invention. Whether reconfiguring images or amplifying centuries-old frequencies, her poetics create a space where continuity and rupture coexist. Her works not only document but open up ways for visual sonorities to remain as pulsating matter, a promise of the future and an invitation to listen to ancient whispers that have never stopped vibrating: melanin, love, faith, struggle, invention, and community.

Nathalia Grilo

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

Quilombo Santa Rosa dos Pretos – Festa da Cabocla Tereza Légua na crôa da mãe Severina Silva em homenagem a São Sebastião e obrigação de ano do serviço de dois filhos de santo “cavaleiros” do Caboclo Roxo e Caboclo João da Mata, Itapecuru Mirim, MA, 2024 [Quilombo Santa Rosa dos Pretos – Cabocla Tereza Légua Festival at the crown of Mãe Severina Silva, in homage to Saint Sebastian and in fulfillment of the yearly obligation of two filhos de santo “cavaleiros” of Caboclo Roxo and Caboclo João da Mata, Itapecuru Mirim, MA]. Black-and-white photograph.

Nádia Taquary

In her sculptures, Nádia Taquary evokes feminine power through bronze casting. By transmuting the metal and shaping it, the artist imbues it with a technical refinement reminiscent of sumptuous ancient African production. Her work re-signifies African traditions, bringing to light technologies, narratives, and aesthetics that have historically been ignored or appropriated by the West.

Based on her studies of Afro-Brazilian jewelry, Taquary delves into ancestral, religious, and Afro-feminine history. Jewelleries such as balangandans, which adorned the waists of Black women during the enslaved-owning period, are symbols of strength and power. By expanding them into three-dimensional form, the artist deconstructs narratives imposed by colonialism and the history of art itself.

Mulher Pássaro [Bird Woman], 2021. Bronze. 185 × 55 × 75 cm. Menina Pássaro (Areyegbó) [Bird Girl (Areyegbó)], 2023. Bronze. 155 × 55 × 45 cm. Photo: Thales Leite.

In the installation Ìrókó: A árvore cósmica [Ìrókó: The Cosmic Tree] (2025), created for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, the artist deepens her relationship with materials and with bronze forging. Using fiberglass, bronze sculptures representing the Ìyámis (female ancestral entities), and strings of beads in the colors of the deity Ìrókó, the work evokes ancestral knowledge through the cycle of life. Ìrókó, the orisha lord of time and ancestrality, came to be worshipped in Brazil by means of the gameleira – a tree found in the yards (or terreiros) of religions of African origin, signaled by a white flag. Ìrókó is the antidote to evil, the calm after the storm, and the inevitability of life. It was the first tree to be planted and, according to tradition, it was through it that the orishas descended to Earth, and upon which the Ìyámis sorceresses landed.

Ana Paula Lopes

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

Obaluaê (Dinka Orixás series), 2018. Glass beads, cowries, copper, gourds, raffia. 160 × 40 × 12 cm. Photo: Sérgio Benutti.

Mundo [World], 2012. Iron, cowrie shells, straw, wooden necklaces. 108 × 45 × 45 cm (sphere); 100 × 100 cm (base).

Photo: Beatriz Franco.

Madame Zo

Untitled (Style Déménagement) [Moving Style], 2013. Banana fiber, spool, grass. 216 × 118 × 1 cm. Photo: Nicolas Brasseur, ADAGP, Paris, 2023. Courtesy of Fondation H, Antananarivo.

Widely known by her artist name Madame Zo, Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo (1956–2020) was a major figure of the Malagasy art scene, renowned for her works that constantly blurred the boundaries between arts and craftsmanship. Trained in weaving and textile dyeing, Madame Zo drew inspiration from traditional Malagasy techniques and patterns, producing unique and distinctive abstract pieces, politically charged due to their capacity to question environmental and sociopolitical issues in Madagascar. With a conscious endeavor to rethink the limits of conventional weaving practices, Madame Zo integrated atypical and unexpected objects into her weaves, complementing the traditionally used materials such as cotton and silk. Often sourced from the quotidian, these resources, beyond their aesthetic or mere functionality, provided information on the artist’s creative process and deep engagement with her surroundings and the people that form it.

In the framework of 36th Bienal de São Paulo, a selection of her works provides in-depth insight into Madame Zo’s practice, which spanned nearly five decades. Woven with copper wires, herbs, wood, plastic, food bits, and magnetic bands, just to name a few, Madame Zo’s choice and usage of each material draws our attention to some of the particular urgencies she aimed to address. Copper, which predominantly appears in her pieces, could be read as a reference

L’Éclair [The Lightning], 2015. Thread, cut newspaper, magnetic tape. 229 × 192 × 1 cm. Photo: Nicolas Brasseur, ADAGP, Paris, 2023. Courtesy of Fondation H, Antananarivo.

2019. Wood shavings, fabric, 16mm film, cotton thread. 111 × 77 cm.

Nicolas Brasseur, ADAGP, Paris, 2023.

of Fondation H, Antananarivo.

to communication technologies, but also to healing due to its capacity to conduct energies – what Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung termed the “techno-spiritual” aspects of copper in a text written on Madame Zo’s works.1 Furthermore, materials such as herbs or paper, particularly in the form of newspaper clippings, refer to her engagement with alternative therapeutic practices and information dissemination, respectively.

In what could be perceived as a retrospective, the constellation of works presented in the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion alludes first and foremost to a retrospection –a re-contextualization of each piece, particularly as they pertain to this year’s Bienal thematic and invite us to conjugate humanity in its manifold manifestations.

Billy Fowo

1. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, “Spacemaking and Shapeshifting in Mme Zo’s Weaving Practice”, in Madame Zo. Bientôt je vous tisse tous. Paris: Fondation H, 2024.

Untitled,

Photo:

Courtesy

Frank Bowling

Frank Bowling’s practice has drawn from color field painting and abstract expressionism. His prioritization of process and the properties of paint are central to his works. Combining abstraction, landscape, and cartography, Frank Bowling’s oeuvre is characterized by an experimental and spontaneous relationship with shape, color, and structure. Known for his continually evolving practice, Bowling began his career with more figurative painting before moving to pure abstraction in the 1970s and rooting his work in a convergence of techniques and styles evident in his work to this day.

“Blackness is no more expressed, in the literal sense, by painting a black face than by a black line,”1 Frank Bowling wrote in 1970. There is no one symbol that represents the experience of Blackness more than another symbol. Abstraction is just as effective as figuration in Black meaning-making, perhaps in that neither is effective at all. The symbols in

are a collection of

Bowling’s paintings

Pouring Over 2 Morrison Boys & 2 Maps I, 2016. Acrylic and acrylic gel on canvas with marouflage. 293 × 183 cm. Photo: Jess Littlewood. © The Frank Bowling Foundation. All rights reserved, DACS 2025. Courtesy of The Frank Bowling Foundation.

Agnes, 2025. Acrylic and acrylic gel on canvas with found objects, marouflage. 193,5 × 280,2 cm. Photo: Anna Arca. © Frank Bowling. All rights reserved, DACS 2025.

iconographic signifiers that the artist arranges in thematic series. Leaning on abstraction, Bowling creates compositional arrangements that remain opaque vestiges of land masses and shapes.

Born in South America, in Guyana, Bowling has spent his six-decade-plus career living between London and New York. The artist’s choice to represent the shapes of continents and islands reflects a stripping away of assumed relationships between color and identity, nation and personhood. Shapes that once seemed representative, such as continents and islands, are abstracted to reveal that even the illusion of the shape has a great bearing on the message extracted from the painting. For Bowling, “the subject of painting is paint,” the artist’s son, Ben Bowling, said in 2024.2 The illusion of meaning has its foundation in the human eye’s perception of formal elements. Committed to process, Bowling’s compositions also question the politics of cartography, a motif ubiquitous across his work. In the Map Paintings (1967-1971) series, the South American continent begins as a formal outline that ascribes to the cartographic borders, then becomes a remnant of a shape beyond cartography. The motif is abstracted as the continent becomes an amalgamation of rectangles, which later become vertical lines that stretch from the top of a painting down to the bottom. In abstractions that seem to depict horizons or landscapes, we find the motifs of continents and longitudinal lines seeming to appear again. The illusion of shape, horizon, atmosphere, border, and shore, however, is merely a trick of the eye.

Margarita Lila Rosa

1. Frank Bowling, “Silence: People Die Crying When They Should Love.” Arts Magazine, v.45, n.1, Sep.-Oct. 1970, p.32.

2. “‘The Subject of Painting Is Paint’: On Frank Bowling,” The Nation, Jan. 10, 2024.

This participation is supported by: British Council, within the UK/Brazil Season of Culture 2025-2026

Dancing, 2023. Acrylic and acrylic gel on canvas with marouflage 413,2 × 197,5 × 4,3 cm Photo: Anna Arca. © The Frank Bowling Foundation. All rights reserved, DACS 2025. Courtesy of The Frank Bowling Foundation.

Sertão Negro

Sertão Negro is both an aesthetic and political proposition, an initiative that challenges boundaries – between art and life, community and autonomy, collective organization, belonging, and displacement. Founded by Ceiça Ferreira and Dalton Paula, the project is a space for creation that respects individuality within a joint action, where art is not confined to the production of objects but unfolds into a way of inhabiting the world.

Based in Goiânia, Goiás, Sertão Negro hosts a studio, residencies for national and international artists, a film club, a capoeira group, an active kitchen, gardens, and nurseries. These are not mere metaphors of resistance but concrete tools in the search for sovereignty and self-determination, evoking quilombola and Indigenous resistance practices – both past and present. There, cultivation and creation intertwine, making the notions of care and continuity more than words: what is planted in the Sertão is a way of doing and thinking that transcends beyond its walls.

Mediated visits. Photo: Jhony Aguiar.

Cineclube Maria Grampinho. Photo: Ceiça Ferreira.

Formed by around thirty people – including resident artists, researchers, cooks, educators, curators, and members of Sertão Verde, a group focused on agroecology and food sovereignty – the collective promotes debates and exchanges of experiences in an alternative model of exchange, where processes are as important as the artistic production itself. The foundation of the project is rooted in quilombos and terreiros – spaces of resistance and knowledge – as well as in ancestral construction techniques and the wisdom of the land.

At the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Sertão Negro manifests as an active and expanded space. In collaboration with the Fundação Bienal’s education team, the group proposed a public program with workshops, open studios, a film club, and activities in Ibirapuera Park. Inside the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, the work is organized around two stone circles, inspired by the Sertão Negro space where collective decisions are made. The stones, loaned by the Guarani of Jaraguá, São Paulo, represent a gesture of respect for the land’s time. Two walls structure the space: one presents the history of the project through photos and documents; the other projects the ongoing activities and processes. There is also a mud counter, built with ancestral knowledge, where botanical workshops and cooking practices take place. These actions are tools for imagining and constructing alternative ways of being in the world, within a collective experimentation space where art unfolds as a fluid process, in dialogue with multiple temporalities and territories.

Amanda Carneiro

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Sertão Verde – Agroecologia

Lab Inhotim. Photo: Jhony Aguiar.

Sallisa Rosa

Sallisa Rosa works with memory, formed in clay works, drawings, installations, photographs, and other media. There are incarnate mysteries that we experience in contact with the objects and spaces she produces. Our sensitive presence encounters others that have been there longer, and history is made in an overdue dialogue. Collecting is a central procedure of her work. For her objects or installations, the artist collects clay from different territories. I wonder if the earth has a memory of its own – of its uses and, consequently, of the abuses it has suffered. So I take clay as an ancestral memory, as the sediment of history. Memory is also an attribute of plants, animals, rivers, and other beings. They all record their trajectory, the absorption of time, and transformations of place. Branches, for example, reveal the ways in which a tree responds to the scarcity or abundance of water, changes in the soil, air, and interactions with other bodies. In dealing with this material, Sallisa Rosa is working with historical material. When she collects elements for her works, perhaps she is collecting documents from a history that has not yet been told and which is elaborated by the gestures of building. I wonder if it’s possible to inherit gestures when handling a material loaded with time, like a memory of touches. The gesture is the expression of a body that, at every moment, deals with the set of memories inscribed in it. With these gestures, the artist erects objects that grow like hollow bodies or beings made up of sutured fragments. She erects walls, invents new places, new territories. With the gestures she inherits, she takes part in the use of the land.

Her practice is also anchored in collectivity when she brings together a group of people to work, be, eat, plant, think, and feel together. In these moments, the artwork is born from the sharing of knowledge about construction, materials, modeling, ceramic firing, among others. The ways of making narrate these encounters and condense the specific knowledge of a group – their way of dealing with life. With the memory of matter, organized by the gestures of those who work, Rosa’s work constructs a narrative in which time takes the form of her labyrinth: there are several entrances and exits, and the paths are spiral. Outside of linearity, it is possible to return to where you came from to experience smells, sounds, and temperatures. In the labyrinth, the body moves forward by intuition, risking getting lost just to see what’s on the other side of a wall. There are always other sides – and each path leads to another.

Caio Bonifácio

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

Topography of Memory, 2023. Process images and installation view at Collins Park Rotunda, Miami. Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary.

Carla Gueye

In her multidisciplinary practices, Carla Gueye investigates notions of intimacy and transculturality, exploring how these themes manifest and reverberate in the family context. Her works propose reflections on the complexities of identity, affective relationships, and the experiences that emerge from encounters and tensions between different cultures. By approaching otherness, her work also reveals emotional, artistic, and socio-ecological dimensions. By using materials such as lime and clay, the artist not only explores their physical properties but also constructs narratives that reconfigure cultural knowledge and imagery. Themes such as memory, the female figure, and processes rooted in the excavation and re-appropriation of partially confiscated narratives run through her work, which simultaneously becomes a way of re-inscribing and understanding her own history. The manual labor that permeates

Sisters and I, 2023. Lime and sand. Variable dimensions. Photo: Ibra Wane.

her poetics establishes an intimate, almost domestic relationship with the materials – metaphorically evoking the idea of construction in both its social and humanistic dimensions. In this way, her works become sensitive spaces for dialogue and reflection on culture, identity, and the complex webs that shape human experience.

Cabinet of Invisible Desires (2025) is an interdisciplinary installation that explores the sensory, symbolic, and cultural dimensions of intimacy through a contemporary reinterpretation of female seduction rituals, especially those associated with dial diali, the Wolof art of seduction. The project uses a hybrid language that combines sculpture, fabric, video, and olfactory composition to propose an aesthetic of desire rooted in invisible everyday gestures, vernacular knowledge, and the sensitive archives of the body.

Ana Paula Lopes

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program

Malika Agueznay

Painter, sculptor and print artist Malika Agueznay is a leading figure as a woman for Moroccan modern and contemporary art. She studied at the Casablanca Art School between 1966 and 1970, during the golden age and pedagogic revolution led by Farid Belkahia, Mohamed Melehi, and Mohammed Chabâa. Agueznay is one of the rare women artists who studied during this time at the Casablanca Art School and is still active to this day. She studied alongside other important artists such as Abdallah Hariri, Houssein Miloudi, and Abderrahmane Rahoule. She is known for her landmark seaweed pattern, which finds various applications (from printmaking and painting with and without relief to woodcut) and ramifications. The pattern functions as cellular structures growing and proliferating organically in abstract landscapes – a polymorphous and fluid pattern either used as an all-over visual strategy or linked to calligraphic text, between botanical arborescence and feminine anthropomorphic evocations. Agueznay’s aquatic or atmospheric compositions – blending oceans, constellations, and suns – can also be seen as a decorative and feminine response to Western kinetic and minimalist art.

Among the different Casablanca Art School platforms and interrelated events, Malika Agueznay was an important actor in the Cultural Moussem of Asilah Festival, where artists were invited to paint murals from 1978 on. She was especially active in the printmaking studio. Since the first edition of the festival, she took this important role in the workshop of Roman Artymowski before studying printmaking with Mohammad Omar Khalil and Robert Blackburn in New York. Agueznay, who took the lead at the Asilah studio when Khalil left it, is the first woman printmaker in Morocco.

In 1981, Agueznay was part of a group of artists and activists (including Mohamed Melehi, Mohammed Chabâa, and Chaïbia Talal) who were invited by the psychiatrist Abdellah Ziou Ziou to organize an artistic-collaborative program (including mural paintings and cinema), involving the patients of the Berrechid hospital on-site, as a way of rehabilitating the role of psychiatry and mentally ill people within Moroccan society, to save them from total marginalization. Agueznay collaborated closely with the art historian and anthropologist Toni Maraini for the program devoted to the women patients of the hospital.

Agueznay’s organic abstractions have many points of origin within the same cosmogony or system of signs.

Morad Montazami

This participation is supported by: Arab Fund for Arts and Culture

Le Soleil [The Sun], 1970. Acrylic on wood. 54 × 54 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Amina Agueznay.

Oscar Murillo

Oscar Murillo presents A Song to a Tearful Garden (2025), a site-specific, collective painting in Ibirapuera Park. Visitors to the Bienal will encounter curved scaffolding structures positioned on either side of the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, each with a wall of artist canvas and art materials, allowing the public to create a series of largescale paintings. Every week the public’s marks will create an index of painted layers providing a place of reflection against a backdrop of cosmopolitan energy from the surrounding city. Situated within this duality of nature and urban modernity the canvases bear witness to the idea of darkness haunting a harmonious surface. This is a frequent concern in Murillo’s work, often alluding to the biography of Claude Monet and his famous Water Lilies (1920-1926), created in spite of the artist’s debilitating cataracts and loss of vision. In Ibirapuera Park, these collaborative canvases are an ode to the surrounding environment: a song to a tearful garden.

The flooded garden, 2024. Activity at Tate Modern, London. Commissioned as part of the Uniqlo Tate Play program. Photo: Sophie Shaw. © Tate. Courtesy of the artist and Tate.

The flooded garden, 2024. Exhibition view at Tate Modern, London. Photo: Tim Bowditch. © Oscar Murillo.

Ahead of the installation, Murillo invited friends, family, and members of the public to form the painting’s base layer in a series of drawing sessions held around the world. Canvas will travel to São Paulo from across the Atlantic, throughout Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean in a celebration of collective spirit anchored by the exercise of mark-making, a process Murillo refers to as social mapping. The resulting canvases with their accumulated marks become an embodiment of the passage of time, the flow of people, and the geographical markers that connect us. The structures themselves draw on the power of the collective in communal spaces, using gesture, repetition, and the flooding of marks to activate viewers and participants alike. These ideas of collective energy are mirrored in the artist’s Mesmerizing Beauty (2025) installation, presented inside the Pavilion. The work comprises a series of oil-painted seascapes on cardboard, with traces of their former life as traded goods visible beneath Murillo’s gestural marks. Propped up by vertical lengths of wood and secured to disposable plastic chairs, the installation manifests a sense of dissonance echoing the poetic aspirations of the public participation unfolding outside. Murillo will partner with the Bienal’s education team, inviting members from various cultural and educational institutions to contribute to this collective artwork – embracing the Bienal’s curatorial concept of reflecting on humanity, claiming space, and fostering encounters.

Text provided by the artist

Masses, 2024. Solo exhibition view at WIELS, Brussels. Photo: Reinis Lismanis. © Oscar Murillo.

Chapter 2 Grammars of Defiances

To be human is to resist all forms of dehumanization. The story of humanity is plagued by countless examples of humans dehumanizing others. Histories, presents, and futures of resistances come in varying shapes and shades, which are at the core of this chapter.

From resistances against land appropriation, extractivism, disenfranchisement of people and their cultures, enslavements of varying kinds and resistances against the urge to capitalize on and destroy nature. The works in this chapter, although set in contexts in which violence prevails or in which collapse is constant, are not dominated by a world in ruins – there is a need to denounce, but let the grammars of such resistances reside in sonic or spiritual gestures, educational or economic efforts, physical and psychological methods of resisting, and much more. Sovereignty and social, economic, cultural, and political emancipation are the cornerstones to Peter Tosh’s call for equal rights and justice.

To be human is to defy the coloniality of power as expressed in Fela Kuti’s “Colonial Mentality,” to shift from the imposition of monoculture of the plantation economy, autocratic tendencies, warfare as political strategy and hierarchies of power to embracing democratic, pluralistic ways of responsibly and respectfully being in the world.

Suchitra Mattai

Suchitra Mattai is an Indo-Caribbean artist and storyteller based in Los Angeles. Poetically navigating the waters of the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, Mattai weaves together unexpected materials and layers that (re)configure and generate critical frictions from the histories and practices of her predecessors from India and Guyana, whose stories linger as whispers in the corners of history. From alternative horizons, she explores orality and family archives tracing oceanic migrations, tensioning and interrogating, from her ancestral legacy, the colonial indentured labor system that facilitated the migration of Asian communities (primarily from India and China) to the Caribbean as replacements for labor, after its so-called “abolition” of slavery.

Her work with aged and discarded materials, through ancestral practices like embroidery and weaving, transforms everyday domestic textiles into rituals that engage in a spatiotemporal dialogue with their original makers and the eras in which these objects held value. Thus, she redefines practices and materials once deemed obsolete.

This ritual becomes an act of reclamation, empowerment, and resistance, honoring the resilient labor of women.

A ritual that caresses other possibilities beyond Western

to leave a trace, 2024. Worn saris, fabric, beads, dried grass, sculptural goddess busts. Courtesy of Tampa Museum of Art.

logics, which have monopolized discourse on contemporary issues of gender and labor. In doing so, she opens an equitable space for celebration and healing, both communal and personal.

Within these possibilities, Mattai crafts an ideal universe where other forms of radical consciousness appear: those that (re)write themselves through “silent revolutions,” characteristic of the Caribbean’s untold histories. Stories that do not drown but instead float upon its waters, reach the shore, narrating the multiplicity of experiences from other cosmogonies, from the lives of women and racialized peoples. As an Indo-Caribbean woman, Suchitra Mattai honors them directly.

Mario A Llanos

Translated from Spanish by Sylvia Monasterios

becoming, 2024. Worn saris, fabric, mirrored polished stainless steel. Installation view at Socrates Sculpture Park, New York. Photo: Scott Lynch.

Pappy’s house, 2024. Worn saris, fabric, fringe, beads. 305 × 548 × 274 cm. Photo: Nicholas Lea Bruno. Courtesy of the ICA San Francisco.

Ana Raylander Mártis dos Anjos

Ana Raylander Mártis dos Anjos’s practice develops through long-term research-based projects. In the largescale installation A casa de Bené [Bené’s House] (2025), Raylander turns the research question inward, into herself and her nuclear family, “These are pieces left over from my great-grandfather’s house, all used or made by him: a piece of vine with a base; a lighter in the shape of a bullet; a bamboo basket; a gourd; a long and a short pau-mulato stick; and a small wooden box.”

Starting from a set of objects left over from the demolished wattle-and-daub house built by her great-grandfather Benedito Cândido, Raylander builds an installation that seeks to recognize her great-grandfather’s creative influence on her political and poetic construction. Raylander lays the foundations of Bené’s house inside the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, engaging the materials already recurrent in her practice – textile totemic columns sculptures composed of tied-up pieces of fabric made from natural fibres, woollen knits, cotton shirts, and leather straps – while incorporating new techniques and materials. The new elements include brass baskets, sculptures, and the objects left over from her great-grandfather’s house, continuing a quest to recover her family’s memory. Part of the ephemera in the installation includes a sketch of the floor plan of Bené’s house, mapped by Efigênia, the artist’s grandmother, further demonstrating Raylander’s commitment to exploring the possible reconstructions of personal histories.

Arranjo 1 [Arrangement 1] from the series Sepulcro caiado [Whitewashed Tomb], 2024. Rustic vine basket and white escape ropes made from fabric. Photo: José Pelegrini.

Fragmented across the Pavilion’s three floors and arranged in a calculated/organic manner, the whole work explores familial structures as enduring institutions, looming large in both memory and form. Their significance is made precious through casting in bronze and the symbolic presence of columns – here, the columns represent Raylander’s great-grandfather’s nine children. The sets of metal baskets refer to the local context: the small town of Bela Vista de Minas (Minas Gerais), where the presence of mining is a daily occurrence and contrasts with vernacular and traditional practices, such as basketry. From these baskets come soft sculptures that wind throughout the space and serve as an umbilical cord that connects the entire installation. The seven original objects are arranged individually in some of the baskets, while the baskets that don’t contain these objects hold charcoal, stones, earth, ore, tobacco, and other organic materials that are part of the ecology and history of the territory and the family of Bela Vista de Minas. The totality of these elements intertwines to weave narratives of family history, place, nation, and belonging.

Nkule Mabaso

Tobacco Studies, 2024. Installation view at Galeria Luis Maluf, São Paulo. Photo: Estúdio em Obra.

Mansour Ciss Kanakassy

For more than two decades now, the Berlin-based and Senegalese artist Mansour Ciss Kanakassy has been developing an artistic and intellectual concept titled Laboratoire de Déberlinisation [Deberlinization Laboratory], to question and transcend the mental boundaries imposed on the African continent and its peoples during the 18841885 Berlin conference. With an accent put on the need to rethink identity, migration, and cultural diversity, the Deberlinization Laboratory has continuously advocated and facilitated cultural dialogues and exchanges between several communities across the globe. As a response to the curatorial statement of this year’s edition of the Bienal de São Paulo, Mansour Ciss Kanakassy proposes a multiformat piece titled Gondwana la fabrique du futur [Gondwana, the Factory of the Future] (2025). The project is named after the supercontinent Gondwana – sometimes referred to as Gondwanaland. Taking cues from the philosophical concept Quilombismo, developed by Abdias Nascimento, Gondwana la fabrique du futur is conceived as an independent and emancipatory site of discourse and resistance that strengthens the links between the African continent and its diasporas, while fundamentally addressing their social conditions.

Afro, United States of Africa, 2021. Project for the Laboratoire de Déberlinisation.

Envisioned as a spatial intervention, the installation consists of large canvases produced using mixed-media techniques and drawings portraying several cartographies, and a banking infrastructure, the Quilombo Bank, which reminds us of the artist’s long-term practice that consists of setting up monetary branches in several geographies where one finds the Deberlinization Laboratory. Produced for the occasion, special banknotes – known as Afro-Quilombo, designed as a tribute to the resistant quilombolas – are put in circulation, and visitors can acquire them at the Quilombo Bank in exchange for Brazilian Real or US Dollars. This gesture, beyond its symbolism, is a political one that alludes to a futuristic currency, independent and free from the global foreign exchange markets usually determined by demand and supply speculations, and regulated by economic factors such as inflation, interest rates, and geopolitical events. It enables the free circulation of currencies, at least throughout the Bienal.

This participation is supported by: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen – IFA

In its core approach, Gondwana la fabrique du futur situates itself against established hegemonic structures, such as those of the nation-state, and its vicious mechanisms, such as visa-border regimes, hence providing a space where liberty can be practiced.

Billy Fowo

Project for the installation Quilombo Central Bank, 2025.

Emeka Ogboh

The Way Earthly Things Are Going II (Mother Earth’s Lament) (2025) is a sound and object installation conceived for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo. Drawing on Bienal’s curatorial theme, which frames humanity as an active and ethical practice, the work meditates on the profound and often violent entanglement between human progress and ecological collapse. Rooted in the lens of deforestation, the installation weaves together the emotive force of folk rhapsody, contemporary data-driven compositional structures, and a multisensory environment to create an immersive experience that reflects on the interdependence between the human and the environment.

Resonating with “Fragment I” of the curatorial concept –which urges us to listen to the world and engage with nature as a way of practicing humanity – this work reactivates our auditory, visual, and olfactory capacities in the face of environmental devastation. The installation draws from environmental research, oral narratives, and traditional songs of grief and reverence for nature. These elements are recomposed into a contemporary choral work that gives voice to the Earth’s suffering, and to the fragility of the ecosystems we continue to erode.

The lyrics of the work are structured in the tradition of the folk lament – simple, direct, and emotionally resonant. This lyrical approach enhances the work’s accessibility and depth, inviting intimate connection through poetic imagery, repetition, and call-and-response. The verses

The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017. Installation view at Athens Conservatoire (Odeion).

Photo: Mathias Voelzke.

recount the Earth’s pain in vivid language, while the chorus anchors the emotional landscape in collective grief. The bridge sharpens the urgency, pointing to man-made environmental catastrophe, while the outro drifts into silence, a fading breath that leaves behind a haunting absence. This structure lends itself naturally to the installation’s a cappella multichannel format: as the choir’s voices emerge individually from bespoke tree stump speakers, overlapping harmonies enrich the folk simplicity, creating a spatial lament that echoes across time.

Folk songs, long vessels of cultural memory, hold within them the ancestral knowledge and lived wisdom of communities that have cultivated coexistence with the land. In The Way Earthly Things Are Going II, these songs are reinterpreted by a contemporary choir of women and embedded into sculptural remnants of the natural world –tree stumps that once resonated with life. Through this gesture, the installation bridges ancestral knowledge and present-day ecological urgency, transforming each stump into a resonant body that mourns its own disappearance. Folk songs endure not because they are grand, but because they are honest. They speak plainly to the heart, transcending barriers of culture or language. In The Way Earthly Things Are Going II, the folk form becomes a vessel for planetary mourning – and perhaps, for a call to attention before silence takes hold.

Text provided by the artist

This

Ámà: The Gathering Place, 2021. Installation view at Gropius Bau, Berlin. Photo: Luca Girardini.

Minia Biabiany

Minia Biabiany’s practice weaves together questions of habitat, human and more-than-human bodies, and language. She creates poetical immersive environments that call audiences to read and feel within the layered colonial histories and their legacies, questions the relations with spaces – both mental space and places –, and reappropriates learning and healing methods as tools. By unearthing traces of the colonial plantation and assimilation systems that continue to impact the archipelago of Guadeloupe, she often uses plants as guides to look at silence, lost knowledge, or forgotten remnants. While crossing her installations, the viewer is invited to engage and project with personal and collective narrative threads kept partly open. Biabiany builds “choreography for the gazes,” and asks for presence, for a change in our rhythm of perception and attention. Her different installations are thought of as phrases continuing one chanting.

In Guadeloupean creole, zyé an kann, meaning “eye of sugarcane,” refers to the nodes marking the stem of the sugarcane with root bands and from which a new sprout can grow. Biabiany plays with that common say and with no stems, turns the sugarcane nods into 400 eyes looking at us and tearing dried sugarcane leaves. Those gazes are a possibility to see and be seen by the women and men enslaved who were forced to cultivate sugarcane fields, but also connect with lineage and passing memories. Working on

the sky with rooted-eyes, 2025. Installation view at Galerie Imane Farès Gallery. Photo: Tadzio.

her connection with her female lineage for several years, Biabiany proposes here what she calls “punctuations”, small ceramics hung, operating like metaphors or quotes related to objects, figures, emotions, and stories of the women who came before her. Their verticality responds to the flat horizontal water containers reflecting all parts of the ceiling. Those circles of black water are doors to look at from different perspectives, but also directly integrate our image into what surrounds us. The soil is above us, close, talkative but whispered. Woven to all those elements, the sound of the entire installation is a collaboration with the sound designer Thierry Girard aka Thyeks, whose proposition is structured in three movements like a natural cycle: the initial call (awakening of the living, deep, slow resonances); the migration (evolving textures, fluid movement); and the dispersion (fragmentation and propagation in space with unpredictable echoes).

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program

It is not a flourishing garden that welcomes us, but the extractive practice of monoculture. Introduced during the colonial era, that practice of planting, cultivating, and harvesting single crops such as sugarcane, cotton, and plantain has led to the erosion and destruction of soils. The sugarcane field is not only defined by containment and extraction but also by chosen moments of opacity, where figures defiantly choose to remain unseen. Evoking scenes of escape, maroonage, and concealment, these disembodied eyes, and the voices that trail them, symbolize the designed opacity of rural Black space.

Text provided by the artist

the length of my gaze at night, 2024. Installation view in the exhibition Siluetas sobre maleza, Museo Jumex, Mexico City. Photo: Ramiro Chavez. Courtesy of the artist.

Forensic Architecture/ Forensis

It is well known that European colonists depleted West African cultural and natural resources alongside human populations. But a story less often told is how this historical looting presaged contemporary resource extraction, driving ecological collapse. Forensic Architecture/Forensis offer their visualization tools to this story, entering through the 1897 sacking of the “Forest Kingdom” of Benin by the British.

Contesting Western legal contexts in which testimony is an institutionally regulated and circumscribed act, The People’s Court I (2025) offers a form of transgenerational testimony that is immersive and emergent, evidentiary and generative. Through live and pre-recorded depositions, witnesses take the stand within evolving digital reconstructions of transatlantic ecologies that have been uprooted and eroded along the “continuum of extractivism.”

If toxic air is a monument to slavery, how do we take it down? (RISE St. James), 2021. Video still. Video, color, sound; 35’03’’. Video: Bron Moyi for Louisiana Bucket Brigade.

German Colonial Genocide in Namibia: The Hornkranz Massacre, 2024. Video still. Video, color, sound; 32’02’’.

The People’s Court I is the first phase of Delta-Delta, a multi-year investigation into the transatlantic petro-extractivist complex, which occupies lands and communities across the “Transatlantic Forest Belt” – a speculative term for a once-contiguous Pangaean forest, long ago divided into an “ecological diaspora” by plate tectonics. The remains of this tricontinental forest span from the ancient sacred groves of the Niger Delta to the burial groves of Louisiana’s historically enslaved people. Now, communities from the Niger and Mississippi Deltas unite in Brazil, the third ecotone, to testify to the transtemporal death and disruption exported from “points of no return” and to the intergenerational resistance that offers reparative visions of the future.

The People’s Court I was sparked by a conversation with Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, inspired by a song of the same title by Mutabaruka, and conceptualised by Tobechukwu Onwukeme and Imani Jacqueline Brown. Partners include Uyilawa Usuanlele, Institute for Benin Studies, Home of Mother Earth Foundation, Museum of West African Art (Nigeria), Rise St. James, and Descendants Project (United States).

Text provided by the artists

Cloud Studies, 2021. Installation view at Manchester International Festival. Photo: Michael Pollard.

Ruth Ige

Time does not behave according to measure in Ruth Ige’s work. It suspends, folds, and accumulates. In this estuarial logic, time becomes a medium of co-existence, a listening body in which memory, myth, and speculative being converge. Her figures, cloaked and faceless, do not offer themselves up for recognition. They remain withheld, mythic, softly monumental. What emerges is not portraiture, but presence – a form of being that holds its own power. Ige deepens this vision through her use of culturally resonant materials: baobab powder, indigo, Nigerian dried leaves, Brazilian clays, blue spirulina. These are not aesthetic embellishments but agents of memory and knowledge – bridging Yoruba and Igbo cultural practices with diasporic life in Brazil, Aotearoa, and various parts of the world. Her canvases act as anthropological estuaries, holding ecological, spiritual, and ancestral inheritances within the very pigment. The paintings take on a slow, sedimentary quality – as if formed over time rather than made at once. Her engagement with the art historical canon is not about refusal, but reconfiguration. Portraiture, if it remains at all, is reshaped through abstraction and imaginative speculation – offering other ways of knowing and remembering.

Formally, the works extend beyond the stretcher. Some hover mid-air, others drape to the floor, or unfold into

Dancing Beneath the Morning Sun, 2023. Acrylic on canvas. 152 × 122 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson Gallery.

immersive structures. One invites the viewer to walk through curtain-like sides of a vast canvas, entering what feels like a time portal. Each spatial decision plays with painting as a site of world-making, echoing textile forms, immaterial transmissions, and imagined futures. The works do not direct the viewer so much as envelop them – soft thresholds between realms, where orientation loosens and linear time dissolves. The viewer becomes a guest inside a world already in motion. Time, in this space, is cyclical – an active force that holds, remembers, and transforms. Ancestors, spirits, mortals, and future beings co-exist within Ige’s painted worlds – not as subjects to be seen, but as agents of something larger, held in quiet motion.

Cameron Ah Loo-Matamua

This participation is supported by: Creative New Zealand

She Lived Beyond the Borders of Time (Immortal), 2022. Acrylic on canvas. 122 × 122 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson Gallery.

And you stood in your power (detail), 2025. Oil sticks, acrylic paint, pine wood filler, acrylic binder, West African indigo pigment (Philenoptera cyanescens), dried leaves of Ugu, Uziza and Utazi on plywood. 153 × 98 cm. Courtesy of the artist and McLeavey Gallery, Wellington. Photo: Cheska Brown.

Theo Eshetu

The montage, the rhythm between images, sounds, and stories, is at the heart of Theo Eshetu’s aesthetic research. An experiment that, like the technical image – electronic and digital – manifests itself in time, whether it is manipulated, inverted, fragmented, repeated, mirrored, or orchestrated, without forgetting that it can also be spiraled. Eshetu is a key figure in a scene once known as video art, a poetic trajectory that takes us back to the 1980s, when the artist photographed the music scene and experimented with art in compositions of multiple monitors, remixing issues related to history, science, nature, social themes, iconography, rituals, and spirituality, offering a new perception of the world.

The multiple operations Eshetu created with the monitor –stacking it until it became a wall, arranging it in diagonals, suspending it from the ceiling of a museum, or even attaching it to different structural and installation devices – make the artist a manipulator of audiovisual language as a cultural system of meanings, or even as a cultural technique. Cultural technique precisely in the sense that it assumes a notion of plural cultures, externalizing and materializing imaginaries, beliefs, and statements, involving a continuous symbolic labor.

The Garden: Ode to Courage, 2025. Video stills. Multi-channel video installation, color, sound. Sound design: Keir Fraser.

Eshetu’s technocultural reflection for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo operates on the nature of plant life. Not so much as a garden that manages nature for human appreciation, but rather the garden as a philosophical environment prior to human intervention – “a contemporary reading of the role of Nature as an integral aspect of Humanity,” in the artist’s own words – which establishes situations of coexistence between nature, life, and humanity. Images of flowers, plants, biomes, and ecosystems become kaleidoscopic music videos about the nature of humanity. And as such, an effort is not made in silence; the sound component of Eshetu’s garden is equally important. A soundtrack that surrounds and envelops the work is poetically composed by mixing the voices of figures like Maya Angelou and others who have reflected on resilience, the strength of humanity, and the consciousness of plants.

André Pitol

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Adjani Okpu-Egbe

The work of Cameroonian-born British artist and scholar Adjani Okpu-Egbe is multifaceted, interdisciplinary, and powerfully engaging. He infuses his personal experience into expressive, harmonious colors, inventive symbolism, an expansive use of materials, and an authenticity grounded in rigorous research. Known for his layered visual language and abstracted figures he refers to as “manimals,” Okpu-Egbe’s cross-demographic shaping of cultural thought is far-reaching. The three works presented as a constellation for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo mark a pivotal moment in his practice. With a style first described as “shelving” by the Bienal’s chief curator, these motifs expand the artist’s technique and incorporate sculptural objects embedded with stories. They complement the door panels – playing with the idea of “open” and “closed” doors in our daily lives – as a potent metaphor for what we shelve, share, or discard. The piece Fortitude (2018-2024) advocates against erasure by shelving books authored by Black women, most notably the Afro-Brazilian educator Conceição Evaristo, whose poem “Da calma e do silêncio” [Of Calm and Silence] inspired the Bienal’s title. Through this gesture, Okpu-Egbe embodies the themes of the event and proposes a diversified canon in place of a dominant, misleading, white, colonial, and patriarchal repertoire.

Fortitude, 2018–2024. Door panels, shelves, customized found objects. 198 × 222 × 29 cm. Photo: Deniz Güzel.

An Allegorical Conglomeration of Origins and Inevitabilities, 2024. Door panels, shelves, customized found objects. 198 × 292 × 29 cm. Photo: Deniz Güzel.

Premonition of Ngarbuh (2020-2024), produced in response to the 2020 Ngarbuh massacre in Cameroon, confronts the horrors of state-sanctioned violence, in which women and children bear the brunt while the “international community” remains silent. Harrowing and emotionally unflinching, the depiction of ghost-like figures flanked by a scorched landscape –with children playing a jump rope game surrounded by strange animals – evokes a haunting sense of insecurity. The shelved objects speak to loss, spiritual desecration, and resilience. In documenting this tragic failure of decolonial processes and the forgotten armed conflict that has engulfed the English-speaking regions of Cameroon since 2016, Okpu-Egbe echoes Picasso’s Guernica (1937) and makes an urgent contribution to art history – a gesture that answers the call for public intellectualism.

Premonition of Ngarbuh, 2020–2024. Door panels, shelves, customized found objects. 198 × 222 × 29 cm.

Photo: Deniz Güzel.

Displayed alongside is An Allegorical Conglomeration of Origins and Inevitabilities (2024), rooted in envisioning Black futures. Its dense layering – a tapestry of autobiographical content foundational to the artist’s storytelling – includes symbols such as vine-bearing lemons, braids, clocks, and lanterns. These elements meditate on inevitabilities intended to shape what the artist describes as “Black Consciousness in Black Futures” (BCBF).

Billy Fowo in collaboration with the artist

Noor Abed

Noor Abed’s work is evidence of a profound relationship between the body and memory. In her work, dance and song are not just forms of expression, but staged devices for the transmission of collective histories. The intersection between reality and magic in her cinematographic approach allows her works to create atmospheres charged with symbolism, in which time seems to unfold in the infinite regeneration of myths. In the film our songs were ready for all wars to come (2021), the artist composed an affirmation of life and a reinvention of traditions, creating a soundscape and a choreographic design closely linked to the Palestinian sociopolitical context. Opting for an analog film format, Abed inaugurates images based on the documentary, but with a specific temporality in which the magical and the imagined traverse the ancestral gestures performed, as

a night we held between, 2024. Film stills. 16 mm film, color, sound; 30’.

well as the relationships between the individuals who dance and sing and who, in many ways, translate the incorporated ideologies into their daily bodies.

This research into gestures returns in a night we held between (2024), the second film presented. In this sonic dive, the chant is a lament, a question, and a prayer to get away from the war. From the caves from where the sounds are captured, the images are immersed alongside the photographic archives and the gestural repetition of the dance, further emphasized around the fire and the women. This sound investigation becomes even more central in the performance Nothing Will Remain Other Than the Thorn Lodged in the Throat of This World (2025), with Haig Aivazian, which is also present at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo.

The use of sound recordings taken from the location where the artist films reinforces a sensory dimension of memory and collective experience. By situating the narratives in the centuries-old caves, entrances, and holes that are also her native landscape, Abed stages the transformations of rituals, reinventing forms of resistance, in which the permanence of bodies in the territory becomes the point of convergence of struggle and survival.

Rita Vênus

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

our songs were ready for all wars to come, 2021. Film stills. Super 8 mm film, color, sound; 20’.

This participation is supported by: Mondriaan Fund

Aline Baiana

Aline Baiana’s works explore the conflicts between the Global North and South from a social justice perspective, exposing the environmental impacts of industrialization. Her work engages with the testimonies of fishermen, shellfish gatherers, artisans, and allies of the quilombola struggle, amplifying the voices of these resistance narratives. Ouro negro é a gente [Black Gold is the People] (2025), the film presented at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, confronts the contradictions of developmentalist logic by examining oil extraction in Brazil and its trail of environmental violence against quilombola communities in exploited territories. On the Maré Island, in the Baía de Todos-os-Santos, the local population fights to preserve their way of life and protect the surrounding ecosystem, even as they face the profound consequences of industrialization and the so-called “progress.” While major infrastructure projects –such as the Mataripe refinery and the Aratu harbor – are celebrated as emblems of national advancement, they are, in reality, sources of destruction and environmental racism for traditional communities, whose territory has been systematically degraded. By questioning the very notion of “wealth,” the artist critiques the values underpinning the development model imposed by elite interests. Through immersive engagement

with the testimonies of those fighting for survival under a system that marginalizes them, the film delivers a powerful indictment of how capitalism perpetuates inequality and exploitation. In doing so, it reactivates a historical narrative of struggle while radically challenging the official discourses of progress and development.

Ouro negro é a gente looks beyond the promises of modernization to examine the social, environmental, and cultural consequences of a model that continues to exclude those who have historically been left behind. The film compels us to rethink what we mean by wealth – and to ask, ultimately, who it is meant to serve.

Rita Vênus

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Ouro negro é a gente [Black Gold is the People], 2025. Video stills. Full HD video, color, sound; 52’.

Song Dong

A prominent figure in Chinese contemporary art, Song Dong tells his stories of self-expression, familial reconciliation, and lived realities in the landscapes of a perpetually changing China. Through a dense oeuvre of sculpture, installations, performance, photography, and video, his works are often composed with quotidian objects and ephemera, alluding to the impermanence of change while proposing a destabilization of material hierarchies in relationship to personal and global themes. A 1989 graduate in oil painting from the Fine Arts Department of Capital Normal University in Beijing, Song slowly de-conventionalized his paintings, eventually breaking with it before turning to avant-garde and experimental art forms when he married fellow artist Yin Xiuzhen in 1992. Outstanding projects include Water Diary (1996), wherein the artist documented his daily activity of writing in water on stone and watching it evaporate, and the Eating the City series (2003-2006), enacted across various cities, in which his edible installations highlighted China’s dramatic urbanization and obsessive consumerism.

A Quarter, 2021–2024. Steel, mirrors, collected daily objects and furniture from different households, lighting fixtures, stools, carpets. 697,4 × 2.564 × 1.310 cm.

For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Song expounded his artistic musings on the concept “borrow” as a way for humans to reflect on our transient existence and form connections in a globalized world. Drawing inspirations from both a carnival’s house of mirrors and the traditional Chinese feng shui method of using mirrors and windows to expand interior space by ushering in the external world, Borrow Light (2025) is a participatory spatial installation that aims to create a void-like space that emphasizes the boundless connections between humans while alluding to the fleeting nature of our presence. The diverse chairs and lamps in the installation – all borrowed from private homes – act as resting places and illuminators that facilitate ephemeral moments of contemplation. Playing with fluid elements such as light, reflection, and illusion, Song’s installation immerses the audiences into an infinite universe, where our images and minds become entwined in a silvery, glowing light.

Hung Duong

This participation is supported by: Independent Curators International

View of the exhibition Quarter and Moment at Ennova Art Museum, Langfang (April –September 2024).

Theresah Ankomah

Theresah Ankomah’s artistic practice reclaims traditional artisanal knowledge not as static heritage but as a dynamic, hereditary practice and communal language. Repurposing is a central theme in Ankomah’s work; it invokes a constant dialogue that is translated both in her paintings and immersive installations. Her utilization of the kenaf to produce onion baskets, once essential items in Ghana’s markets, draws attention to the geopolitical landscape where traditional craftsmanship is overshadowed by the influx of mass-produced goods.

Central to her recent installations is the use of dyed palm leaves – sourced from Dabala in Ghana’s Volta Region –and she collaborates closely with families skilled in the treatment and dyeing of the material. These collaborations are vital to her process, not only for their technical contribution but for the embedded wisdom they carry. Through such intergenerational exchanges, Ankomah reframes weaving as both a material and political act, interrogating the place of “craft” within narratives of trade, geopolitics, and capitalism. Suspended in space like draped cloth or architectural skin, her woven installations transform domestic forms into monumental gestures. The palm leaf – humble and abundant – becomes a vessel for ancestral memory, slow labor, and collective identity. At once sculptural and performative, these works unsettle the hierarchies that have long separated fine art from craft.

Memories of the present, 2020-2021. Draped dyed and undyed kenaf baskets. Courtesy of Nubuke Foundation.

In the installation What Do You See (2025) at Cicillo Matarazzo Pavilion, strips of woven palm leaves cascade across the building’s modernist facade, referencing both protective cloth and ephemeral boundary. Dyed in shades reminiscent of soil and sun, each strand bears the marks of hands – those of the artist and her collaborators in Dabala. Their labor gestures toward a wider ecology, one in which art, nature, and community are intimately entwined. Taking the notion of fragments – or “debris” – as a conceptual starting point, Ankomah presents a sculptural installation that addresses the commodification and fragmentation of goods and bodies under post-colonial regimes and their lingering effects that still find echo into our contemporary times.

Text provided by the artist

Olu Oguibe

Olu Oguibe is a distinguished interdisciplinary artist and scholar renowned for his compelling exploration of identity, migration, and social justice through contemporary art. His practice often intertwines personal narrative with broader historical and sociopolitical issues, deeply engaging global audiences.

For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Oguibe presents a monument in three Brazilian cities – São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Belém – which aims to spotlight ongoing injustices against Indigenous communities in Brazil and worldwide. The monument’s presence is intended to serve as a highly visible acknowledgment of Indigenous struggles, notably addressing the persistent encroachment on Indigenous lands due to agricultural, logging, and mining interests, alongside the violent repression Indigenous activists frequently endure. Conceptually, Oguibe envisions the

Study of the artist’s commissioned work for the 36th Bienal, with a proposed installation at Minhocão, São Paulo.

monument as a tall, large billboard on a building gable, clearly visible from afar in the urban horizon and surrounding areas. Each billboard panel prominently features a provoking question, “MUST YOU TAKE EVERYTHING THAT BELONGS TO INDIGENOUS PEOPLE?,” translated respectively into Nheengatu, Portuguese, and English. Through this multilingual display, Oguibe emphasizes the international resonance and urgency of Indigenous rights.

The project integrates activism with dialogue to document and disseminate ongoing Indigenous struggles, fostering broader awareness and solidarity. The mural monument exemplifies Oguibe’s consistent commitment to art as a vehicle for social reflection, change, and empowerment, highlighting the artist’s enduring dedication to confronting pressing global concerns through transformative artistic expression.

Naiomy Guerrero

Leo Asemota

Within the African continent and its diaspora, it is common practice to acknowledge and honor the ancestors when people gather. This gesture, which could take the form of an offering such as breaking and sharing a kola nut, or pouring some liquor on the ground as a libation, oftentimes both, emphasizes an enduring kinship and heritage that transcend geographical boundaries and nation-state identities. This invocation makes known as well as give praise and gratitude as descendants.

In the framework of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Leo Asemota, a native of Benin Kingdom in Edo State, Nigeria, and currently living in London, offers a work that draws from this practice of libation. The untitled work, derived from a Kissi penny, consists of pieces cast in a copper-tin alloy, each deliberately conditioned to be unique.

Observational 4, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and EoTLA.

Observational 3, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and EoTLA.

The Kissi penny was once a widely circulated legal tender in the 19th and 20th centuries for the Kissi, Loma, and Bandi peoples living in the border regions of today’s Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. The penny, which is believed to have a soul, was made of a long twisted iron rod with an ear (nling) at one end, and a foot (kodo) at the other end. After the French and the British devalued it in the late 20th century in their respective African colonies, the penny still retained ceremonial and spiritual value in many of the Indigenous societies.

As described by Asemota, and as it is customary when libating, the essence is to be found in the act of uttering the word(s) accompanying each offering – in this case, a Kissi penny, offered to each living artist participating in the Bienal – rather than solely in the aesthetic and form of the (art)works.

Billy Fowo

Chapter 3 Of Spatial Rhythms and Narrations

Reflections on the interactions between humans and space-time phenomena are at the crux of this chapter. Humans meeting humans, animals, viruses, architecture, nature, and culture creates varying rhythms. In this chapter we engage in storytelling practices about these modes of encounter and the resulting rhythmic patterns. With increased urbanization and gentrification, the questions of spatiality, accommodation, and sheltering have become even more crucial. The way our bodies navigate spaces is dependent on the architecture, the politics of spatial planning in cities as much as temporal aspects related to working and resting hours, festivities, political movements, human interactions, and much more.

Artists in this chapter engage with patterns of movement or just being within different spaces and geographies at varying times, thematizing rhythmic and arrhythmic patterns of life, circadian rhythms, and established rhythms that govern our quotidians. How do we queer these rhythms and structures that impose standard times and notions of normativity upon our bodies and spaces?

The migration of people across space and time zones enables other forms of encounters. The negotiations of spaces and times, the meeting of cultures, religions, and philosophies, and the fears thereof mark the politics in our age defined by migration. As we cross different thresholds of spaces and times, how do we conjugate our humanity to coexist with dignity and grace within these ever changing new worlds? How do we compose, narrate, sing, and articulate these changing worlds and our encounters that shape them?

Tanka Fonta

Within

Philosophies of Being, Perception, and Expressivity of Being is a multidimensional project by philosopherartist-composer Tanka Fonta, integrating a large-scale visual mural, a three-part sonic installation featuring three orchestral scores, poetic recitations, and a performance script. Drawing from the philosophies of humanity and the variegated cosmologies of our human cultures, Fonta introduces the concept of “inter-field perceptivity” – where fields of perception interlap across molecular, sonic, intuitive, and philosophical dimensions. Brazil is presented not as a local setting but as a mirror of the human condition, inviting viewers into a poetic, immersive reflection on existence, intelligences, and the expressive nature of being.

The immersive sonic dimension is central to the work, consisting of three orchestral compositions arranged in seven movements, recorded by the Orquestra do Theatro São Pedro, in São Paulo, under the direction of Maestro Carlos Moreno. Presented through a headphone-based installation with three listening stations, these scores serve not merely as accompaniment but as foundational components of the project’s structure and sensorial depth. Their presence within the 36th Bienal signals a historic collaboration and aligns with the curatorial emphasis on expanded formats and transdisciplinary encounters.

The mural, while conceived as part of the project’s visual field, emerges from within the already composed sonic, poetic, and philosophical frameworks. It is thus not to be described as a static or finalized artwork, but as a living and

the Universal Fields of Perception (Beyond the Frontiers of Consciounsess), 2024. Acrylic on canvas. 140 × 160 cm.

The Invocatory Calls I (The Chants & Themes of the Numinous), 2024. Acrylic on canvas. 140 × 160 cm.

responsive visual language – one that evolves from deep listening and conceptual resonance. Structured around six thematic constellations, the work invites an immersive experience that encourages perception beyond societal constructs and engages with the sacred nature of all existence. This act of perception echoes the writings of African philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo (1703-1759), who defined sensing as “a disposition of our organic and living body, by which the animal is affected by material and sensible things that are immediately present to it.”1

The Exaltation Dances II (Within the Oceans of Transformation), 2024. Acrylic on canvas. 140 × 160 cm.

The work also includes a performance script, dramatizing a dialogue between human and vegetal intelligences and further expanding the project’s poetic, ecological, and philosophical reach. This script is integrated into the Bienal’s public programming, while the broader project has been formally invited by the Bienal’s education team to be a part of its educational publication series, distributed to schools and cultural institutions.

Rather than presenting ancestral cosmologies as fixed references, Fonta positions them as resonant undercurrents within a planetary project that seeks to articulate the expressivity of being through continuous processes of sensing, reflecting, composing, and becoming.

Billy Fowo in collaboration with the artist

This participation is supported by: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen –IFA, Santa Marcelina Cultura and Cultura Artística

1. Justin E. H. Smith, Stephen Menn (eds.), Anton Wilhelm Amo’s Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Otobong Nkanga

Otobong Nkanga is a critically acclaimed visual and performance artist whose expansive practice engages deeply with issues of environment, identity, history, and the sociopolitical dimensions of global resource exploitation. Employing diverse mediums – including drawing, installation, sculpture, performance, and notably, woven tapestry –Nkanga examines the intricate relationships between people and landscapes, interrogating the complex dynamics of extraction, trade, migration, and memory. Her thoughtful, multidisciplinary approach continues to position her as an essential voice in contemporary art, resonating profoundly with diverse audiences around the world.

Nkanga’s career trajectory reflects an international scope enriched by cross-cultural experiences and exchanges. Educated initially at Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria and subsequently at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she further honed her artistic vision through postgraduate study at DasArts in Amsterdam. Her professional journey has included prestigious residencies at institutions such as Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam and the DAAD in Berlin, which significantly informed her globally conscious approach.

Unearthed – Sunlight, 2021. Installation view at Kunsthaus Bregenz. Photo: Markus Tretter.

Her woven tapestry works, integral to her practice, represent layered narratives, combining visual poetry with poignant critiques of ecological and social exploitation. These intricate textiles not only embody her technical skill and aesthetic sophistication but also serve as visual metaphors for the interconnected threads of human experiences and environmental realities. She inserts bodies into the landscape and indicates them as parts of the soup of wreckage left behind in the wake of environmental exploitation. Nkanga’s tapestries often depict abstracted landscapes and organic forms intertwined with symbolic references, inviting viewers to contemplate the interconnectedness of global histories, economies, and ecologies.

At the upcoming 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Nkanga presents works in her Unearthed (2021) series, which encapsulates her ongoing exploration of humanity’s relationship to natural elements and the environment. This work will offer a critical reflection on contemporary ecological and geopolitical tensions, manifesting Nkanga’s commitment to highlighting environmental vulnerabilities and the shared responsibilities of stewardship and sustainability.

Naiomy Guerrero

This participation is supported by: Flanders State of the Art

Unearthed – Twilight, 2021. Woven textile with trevira, elirex, outdoor polypropylene, multifilament, mohair, monofilament, fulgaren, elirex, sidero, cotton, acrylic, viscose. 350 × 600 cm. Photo: Markus Tretter.

Leiko Ikemura

Leiko Ikemura’s work reflects the singular trajectory of a universal artist who, born in Mie province, Japan, has developed a poetic language shaped by the experience of displacement and a constant dialogue between cultures. Based in Europe since the 1970s, the artist studied at the Facultad de Bellas Artes at the Universidad de Sevilla and spent time in Switzerland and Germany, where she currently resides. This transnational experience allows her to escape both a rigidly Japanese identity and an automatic adherence to the canons of Western art. Her work outlines a field of its own, where echoes of Spanish Baroque painting and European Neo-Expressionism – such as the Junge Wilde movement – intertwine with foundations of Japanese aesthetic thought, including respect for matter and nature, an appreciation of gesture, and the acceptance of imperfection.

This movement between different referential systems becomes especially evident in the Girls series, where Ikemura dismantles both kawaii 1 aesthetics and the traditional male gaze imposed on the female body. Her girls do not seek to please: they are diffuse, at times spectral figures, whose bodies and faces seem to emerge from a mist, carrying an unsettling delicacy and overflowing humanity. With large eyes and simplified features, these figures reveal inner fractures. Some conceal their eyes or mouths; others appear to be dissolving. For the artist, these zones of the body function as “wounds” that connect the self to the outside world. By distancing herself from a Japan-centered gaze, Ikemura is able to reposition the figure of the girl and return her as a subject, not an ideal. In this way, her work reveals the psychological complexity of the transition from childhood to adulthood, a period in which the body and identity undergo their most fragile and turbulent moments.

Girl Dancing, 2010–2011. Oil on jute. 170 × 90 cm.

Courtesy of the artist and Philipp von Matt.

The same vital ambiguity runs through her more recent works, gathered here in a set of three paintings featuring green beings in different stages of mutation. These hybrid figures – part plant, part ancestral – question the human condition and evoke a deep interdependence with other living beings. In the artist’s own words, they “emerge from nature and from belief in the power of the ancestors,” pointing to a regenerative coexistence between worlds and species. Meanwhile, in the Red Scape and Sea Division drawing series, line and color act as records of a sensitive gesture that brings writing closer to landscape - an inheritance visible in both Japanese calligraphy and the practice of sumi-e. With rarefied lines and vibrant atmospheres, these images condense the tension between presence and disappearance. In Ikemura’s work, the elements of tradition are not formal quotations, but living forces that traverse an artistic practice in constant metamorphosis.

Leonardo Matsuhei

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

1. In Japanese culture, kawaii does not simply mean “cute,” but conveys an aesthetic and emotional ideal tied to innocence, modesty, vulnerability, and emotional delicacy. Present across spheres ranging from art to social behavior, kawaii often operates as a form of symbolic control, especially over female and young bodies. Sharon Kinsella Insella, “Cuties in Japan”, in Women, Media, and Consumption in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1995, pp.220-254.

Trees Out of Head (Big), 2015–2023. Patinated bronze. 55 × 67 × 41 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Philipp von Matt.

Girl with a Baby, 2021. Tempera and oil on jute. 124 × 104 × 5 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Philipp von Matt.

Moffat Takadiwa

Through his textile pieces, Moffat Takadiwa weaves strong connections between critiques of consumerism and inequality, by means of the collection and organization of post-industrial waste and African cultural traditions –particularly those from Zimbabwe, his home country. By gathering and sorting discarded fragments of everyday products, packaging, and various materials, Takadiwa creates multicolored objects whose forms sometimes evoke cellular organelles, fungi, or enlarged microorganisms, and at other times suggest, through their beauty and the intricate embroidery on the fabric, ritualistic artifacts, totems, or symbols.

In his project specially conceived for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Takadiwa significantly amplifies the scale of his work, drawing on the symbolic power of Noah’s Ark to comment on the cycles of world destruction and the imperative of its reconstruction after the cataclysm. While the Ark served as Noah’s refuge and a means of preserving species for the restoration and repopulation of the world post-flood, the immersive structure of Takadiwa’s piece, which envelops the audience in a textile blanket coated

Just Delete, 2024. Plastic computer and calculator keys, belt buckles, toothbrushes, clothing tags. 230 × 540 × 10 cm. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano. Courtesy of Semiose, Paris.

with plastic and metal waste, presents itself as a vessel destined to transport the individual into a future governed by a new cosmic cycle. By replacing the Ark’s storage model with that of a portal, meant to demarcate spaces with different functions, Takadiwa emphasizes the idea of crossing, transit, and passage. The sound of the mbira, a musical instrument with idiophonic qualities composed of metal lamellas of varying sizes, widely disseminated in several Sub-Saharan African countries, inspires the energy of transformation and the knowledge of nature necessary for healing the territory devastated by colonial traumas (symbolized by the discarded fragments).

The work invites a reflective exercise on the inseparability of capitalism, racism, and environmental collapse, the mechanisms of inequality production in the post-independence context of Global South countries, particularly those in the African continent, and the re-signification of rejected material (waste) into aesthetic material (artistic object). Equally, it highlights contemporary challenges in confronting the climate crisis and suggests, through the philosophy of Ubuntu, a transition to the future based on sustainability and care. Present in various Bantu languages of Niger-Congo origin, Ubuntu consists of a system of thought and practices that emphasize the redistribution of resources, collectivity, cooperation, and interdependence among people.

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Renato Menezes

The Brain Drain, 2022. Computer, calculator and telephone keys, nail clippers. 220 × 270 × 10 cm. Photo: A. Mole. Courtesy of Semiose, Paris.

Cevdet Erek

Cevdet Erek’s practice emerges at the intersection of sound, rhythm, and spatial experience, in which minimal gestures carry a resonant complexity. With an architect’s sensitivity and a percussionist’s precision, Erek orchestrates installations that subtly reconfigure our awareness of spaces and architectural environments. Through the interplay of seemingly modest visual and sonic elements –such as rulers, skeletal drums, or diagrammatic scores – or near-architectural scale constructions integrated with sound systems, he crafts immersive scenarios where the full body becomes an instrument of perception. His works evoke a quiet attentiveness, drawing our attention to the rhythms of daily life, bodily movements, institutional routines, and the latent histories embedded within architectural structures.

Past projects like Room of Rhythms (2012) and ÇIN (2017) illustrate Erek’s capacity to produce immersive environments by carefully calibrating sound, architecture, and movement. Rather than overwhelming visitors, these installations gently guide personal pathways and encounters and allow individual experiences of spaces. Simple architecture structures – staircases, ramps, or minimal spatial demarcations – become frameworks within which sound interacts with human movement, dissolving clear distinctions between perceiver, architecture, and performer. Similarly, in works such as SSS – Shore Scene Soundtrack (2006), Erek repurposes mundane materials (carpets, manuals, diagrams) into instruments that invite the audience to actively participate in the construction of acoustic landscapes.

For the work presented in this Bienal, Rampa rítmica/ Rhythmic Ramp (2025), Erek has created a spatial choreography on the external ramp of Niemeyer’s iconic modernist building connecting the different floors and chapters of the exhibition with each other, employing rhythmic interventions that mediate architectural boundaries. The site-specific work relies upon precisely articulated sonic and geometric elements, using the temporality of sound and its architectural positioning as a tool to modulate the spatial experience. Central to this experience is the

Room of Rhythms, 2012. Architectural intervention, multi-channel sound, graphics, rulers, objects, performances. Installation view at Documenta 13, Kassel, 2012. Photo: Maria Rosa Rühling.

ÇIN, 2017. Architectural intervention and 35-channel sound. Wood, scaffolding, iron, wire fence, fabric net, directional loudspeakers, computer, light. Dimensions and durations variable. Exhibition view at the Pavilion of Turkey, 57th International Art Exhibiton – La Biennale di Venezia, 2017. Photo: Ali Kabas.

ramp itself – used daily beyond Bienal hours by passersby, joggers, and others –which now offers a site where rhythmic elements resonate with each other, the architecture, and the surrounding environment. The ramp’s sonic world includes patterns distilled from diverse music undergrounds, including Erek’s native Istanbul and São Paulo’s vernacular rhythm-scapes. The work invites associations on movements through space – of ascent and descent – that link sonic and architectural worlds, as well as the rise and fall within movements and histories.

Cameron Ah Loo-Matamua

This participation is supported by: SAHA

Nari Ward

Nari Ward gathers stories from objects and places, transforming them into powerful narratives. The materials he chooses – whether discarded strollers, shoelaces, worn firehoses, or cotton balls – carry layered histories and echoes of lived experiences. Like an archaeologist of the everyday, Ward excavates remnants of consumer culture, societal trauma, and diasporic stories, exposing tensions between memory and forgetting, identity and belonging. Through his multidisciplinary and inventive practice, he converts these abandoned relics into spaces of reflection and reclamation, bridging personal and collective memory, private and public stories, and addressing questions of social justice, power, and overlooked histories. Spring Seed (2025), his new project for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, traces the intangible cultural and commercial entanglements of Jamaica – where Ward was born and raised before migrating to New York at the age of twelve – Brazil, and Japan through the trajectory of coffee, a commodity deeply tied to labor economies, global consumerism, and colonial histories, yet equally associated with desire and leisure. At the center of the installation, an enclosed arena made of bedsprings houses a new video that interweaves footage from Ward’s trips to São Paulo’s Liberdade neighborhood (its Japanese-Brazilian community), Bahia, and Jamaica’s Blue Mountain coffee region. A symbol of luxury and exclusivity, Blue Mountain coffee is cultivated in small quantities, with most of its production exported to Japan, where it

is prized for its rarity and refinement. Within this intimate space, which viewers need to enter, an altar-like speaker system, draped in ironed cotton covers infused with Blue Mountain coffee grinds, functions as both a sculptural and multi-sensorial element, layering sound recordings from São Paulo’s Chapel of Our Lady of Souls of the Afflicted –built on an ancestral Black and Indigenous gravesite. These sonic and visual textures resonate with Ward’s earlier works, such as the video Spellbound (2015), which explored Savannah, Georgia’s fraught histories of slavery, colonialism, resilience, and emancipation.

Through his charged assemblages, Ward not only reclaims discarded materials but also reimagines the potential they carry. Spring Seed extends this ongoing exploration into collectivity, mapping unseen flows and exchanges while complicating dominant narratives. By weaving together visual language, sound, and scent, and by employing moving images – a medium inherently capable of traversing time and space – Ward embraces a non-linear approach that activates the viewers’ imagination, revealing the energies and hidden forces that shape a sense of community and belonging. In doing so, he creates a space where memory resists erasure, and the past speaks powerfully to the present – just as a seed springs to life.

Roberta Tenconi

Nari Ward: Ground Break. Exhibition views at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2024. Photo: Agostino Osio. Courtesy of the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan.

Manauara Clandestina

TRANSCLANDESTINA 3020 (2025) results from an accumulation of stories and processes that evoke multiple languages, in which Manauara Clandestina has been developing her research over the past years. Textiles, video, photography, and performance compose this multidisciplinary work, marked by prophetic desires originating from her neo-Pentecostal formation, yet refusing apocalyptic fatalism. For Manauara, germinating new paths is the only viable way out of a present permeated by violence. Her practice transcends this condition, creating space for possibilities that persist in existing. Although present throughout human history, transvestite ancestries rarely receive prominence in the usual technologies of memory, which are traditionally centered on cis-heteronormative trajectories. Recognizing herself as part of a forthcoming past, Manauara projects the future as a platform for enunciation where, even under constant persecution, escape routes and unexpected alliances continue to determine possibilities for existence.

The desire for escape arises precisely from the imagination that allows us to visualize other possible realities. The work is already in motion; its presence at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo invites us to embrace the many Ícas that already exist and those yet to come. Like queen ants and fig wasps, who shed their wings to ensure the continuity of life, we, too, are urged to rethink the desire for flight, a persistent metaphor for progress. Flying is not imperative when feet are firmly planted on the ground. Even without wings, flight persists as a gesture of moving forward.

Untitled, 2024. Galvanized wire mesh structure with reinforced concrete base, textile, embroidered everyday and consumer objects, organic hair. 126 × 125 × 31 cm.

Since arriving in São Paulo – without the privileges to ease her transition – Manauara has always activated her creativity to build routes capable of taking her beyond the reality imposed as impossible. Her migration became a powerful force, opening doors to new worlds and expanding her practice and communication. Offering a thousand-year vision ahead, her inner journey asserts that the future does not need to be idyllic, but must be grounded in solidarity and sharing. Clandestinas’ new work, TRANSCLANDESTINA 3020, commissioned for the 36th Bienal, is a multidisciplinary project. It centers on the collaboration of a diverse group of practitioners from fashion, music, and film. Together, they created a new clothing line from transformed and repurposed worker’s uniforms, a fashion show, and a sculptural installation of the garments, culminating in a film that documents the entire creative process in the group. Her collaborators and protagonists appear as archetypes, evoking collaboration as a fundamental technology to surpass linear temporality and make all transitions possible.

Aldones Nino

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

O beijo [The Kiss], 2024. Galvanized wire mesh structure with reinforced concrete base, textile, embroidered everyday and consumer objects, and organic hair. 50 × 75 × 69 cm.

This participation is supported by: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen –IFA

Amina Agueznay

Amina Agueznay develops an artistic practice deeply rooted in artisanal knowledge and the human stories that shape it. Her work is grounded in a field-based approach that privileges immersion, exchange, and skill-sharing with craftspeople across Morocco. For nearly three decades, she has woven a dialogue between vernacular techniques and contemporary forms, exploring the dynamics of transmission and transformation at the heart of traditional practices. At the core of her process lies a constant experimentation with materials. Wool, henna, silver, stone, and plant fibers become vectors for a reflection on memory, place, and transformation. Through these living materials, Agueznay questions inherited gestures, reconfigures them, and transposes them into forms that engage with space. Her modular works, often conceived as evolving ensembles, reflect a desire for continuity and metamorphosis. Each installation, each object, embodies a delicate balance between reverence for technical heritage (or ancestral knowledge) and its reinvention in a contemporary framework.

with the help of silversmiths from Tiznit. Clay tiles produced in collaboration with Soufiane Tygliene.

the

Chouk – Variation #1, 2024. Natural spun undyed wool, glue, metal wire, painted galvanized metal. 150 × 100 × 20 cm. Photo: Ayoub El Bardii. Courtesy of the artist and Loft Art Gallery, Marrakech.

Partial view of Graines Perles, 2024. Silver, enamels, formica, wood, horn, coral, date, argan and apricot pits, seashells. Variable dimensions. Enameled bead by artisan Mina Kharbouch (Tiznit, Morocco). Created

Photo: Ayoub El Bardii. Courtesy of

artist; Loft Art Gallery, Marrakech; and Société de Développement Régional du Tourisme Souss Massa.

Her interactions with craftspeople go beyond the act of producing artworks; they represent a collective inquiry in which know-how is not only honored but also questioned and expanded. Transmission becomes a creative act – an exchange that transcends the workshop or cooperative to open up broader reflections on the role of tradition in our contemporary societies. Her modular installations – textile, sculptural, or ornamental – explore temporality and flexibility. They assemble, reconfigure, and reinvent themselves, like a landscape in perpetual transformation. Agueznay plays with scale and volume, shifting between monumentality and intimacy, structure and detail, creating immersive environments that physically and sensorially engage the viewer in the material and its narrative potential.

She conceives art as a space of experimentation where tradition and innovation coexist. Her work celebrates both the excellence of craftsmanship and the power of common purpose, affirming the importance of a continuous dialogue between past and present, between the hand that shapes and the mind that imagines. Beyond form and material, Agueznay’s practice is a meditation on the human as a dynamic force, engaged in interaction and perpetual quest. Through encounters and exchanges, her works deconstruct asymmetries, inviting a world where transmission is not a static act, but a living negotiation between knowledge, experience, and sensibility. In this space of co-creation, joy and beauty are not mere embellishments – they are gravitational forces; political acts that hold our worlds in balance. Amina Agueznay invites us to imagine a future grounded in our shared humanity – one woven from tradition and becoming, matter and memory, the individual and the community.

Meriem Berrada

Exhibition view of FIELDWORKS – Amina Agueznay, Loft Art Gallery, Marrakech (October 2024 – February 2025).

Photo: Ayoub El Bardii. Courtesy of the artist; Loft Art Gallery, Marrakech; and Société Générale. This participation is supported by: Arab Fund for Arts and Culture

Marlene Almeida

Marlene Almeida is an artist whose work is built on the intersection between matter and territory. Born in Bananeiras, in the Brejo region of Paraíba, and with a degree in Philosophy from the Federal University of Paraíba, her artistic career spans over fifty years, driven by close observation of the landscapes of Paraíba and other regions. Her work combines art, science, and philosophy, challenging the conventional limits of artistic practice and proposing a reflection on the cycles of nature and the traces of time.

For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Marlene is presenting Terra viva [Living Earth] (2025), an installation that synthesizes decades of research and creation. Divided into two complementary strands, the work combines technical rigor and poetic power. The technical dimension manifests itself in a study space displaying samples of Brazilian soils, plant resins, minerals, laboratory equipment, and field notebooks. The poetic dimension translates into an installation made up of expanded paintings in matt tempera applied to strips of unbleached cotton. These surfaces, which hang from the ceiling and extend to the walls, evoke the paths taken by the artist throughout her research, incorporating natural rocks that are in dialogue with the chromatic layers used.

The piece follows on from previous works, such as Terra-Devir [Earth-Becoming] (2024) and Vermelho como terra [Red as Earth] (2024), which reaffirm her research into the processes of sedimentation, erasure, and permanence. In the installation, Marlene works with a palette that ranges from the white of pure kaolin to the deep tones of hematite and pyrolusite, composing a color palette that reveals Brazil’s geological variations. The play of shadows cast by the strips of fabric and the lighting reinforces the passage of time, acting as a visual marker reminiscent of sundials.

Beyond its aesthetic and experimental character, Terra viva carries a political and ecological dimension. The work questions notions of ownership and extraction, problema-

tizing the relationship between territory and exploitation. The artist not only collects and transforms natural materials but also proposes a dialogue in which the earth is not an inert object, but a living organism endowed with agency. Her use of natural pigments and low environmental impact techniques reaffirms her commitment to sustainability and to modes of creation that respect the cycles of nature.

Almeida challenges the boundaries between art and science, technique and intuition, tradition and experimentation. Her work not only represents the land, but also listens to it and translates it, transforming its materiality into a narrative. Terra viva stands as a testimony to what the land holds, reveals, and resists forgetting – a sensitive archive in which the passage of time becomes visible and where the landscape, in its infinite transmutation, continues to tell its stories.

Ariana Nuala

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

Work in progress for the exhibition Terra agônica, Walter & Nicole Leblanc Foundation, Brussels, 2025. Photo: Adriano Franco.

Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn

Tuần Andrew Nguyễn’s practice is about memory and storytelling. The Vietnamese-American artist deconstructs official historiography by giving voice to micro-histories, merging personal memories of those involved with retold stories and blending them with mythologies. Through installations, sculpture, archival materials, moving images, and collaborative practices, his works shed light on and give voice to histories that have vanished, been erased, or overlooked under the weight of colonization and its ongoing legacy. Thus, his distinct method of storytelling has become a powerful strategy for resistance, healing, empowerment, and solidarity.

Amongst the Disquiet, 2024. In collaboration with THAO and Marion Hoàng Ngọc Hill. Two-channel video installation. Video, color, sound; 53’. Commissioned by Prospect 6, New Orleans, with additional production support from Duettist and the New Orleans Tourism and Culture Fund. © Tuan Andrew Nguyen 2024. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York.

In the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, the artist presents his two-channel video installation Amongst the Disquiet (2024), created in close collaboration with artist Thảo Nguyễn, as well as Marion Hoàng Ngọc Hill and a dynamic New Orleans Vietnamese community, commissioned for Prospect 6 (2024). The film recounts the story of the bonds within a multi-generational family of Vietnamese background, exploring the intertwining of migration and memory, home and history, land and water. Through interwoven vignettes told through dialogues and songs, the film meanders along the challenges, longings, and complex emotional landscapes of the different family members – the path forward is constantly shaped by the ghosts of the past. Through the perspective of several generations and even the dead, the film explores the questions: What constitutes home when home is left behind? Where is home when loved ones are no longer there? Does home live within us? Or where we bury our dead?

Anna Roberta Goetz

Christopher Cozier

Christopher Cozier is a Trinidadian artist, writer, and curator whose practice critically examines the lingering effects of colonialism and globalization on the Caribbean region. Working across several artistic mediums, like drawing, installation, video, and performance, Cozier’s oeuvre offers dialogic spaces for nuanced, poetic, and sometimes ironic explorations of the world and everyday life from a Caribbean perspective.

Deeply rooted in drawing, which remains a central element in his practice, his pieces often resemble storyboards or visual essays, which, when looked at closely, display layered compositions that suggest movement through time and space and reference both history and the present. Functioning both as mirror and map – reflecting the complexities of Caribbean existence while charting new pathways for thought and action – Cozier’s works invite viewers to confront uncomfortable histories, question inherited narratives, and imagine alternative futures grounded in self-definition and cultural critique.

Home/Portal, 2017–2023. Mixed-media installation with residing artists, various locations. Installation view at St. Ann’s, Port of Spain. Photo: LeXander Bryant.

For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, the artist presents a newly produced work titled After the Appeal Will Come the Next Delivery (2025). Inspired by childhood memories of listening to cricket commentary, the piece consists of several pennant flags, each carrying a sign or pattern. Recognizable amongst the myriad of drawings is the “appeal gesture” – commonly known as “howzat” –performed by a fielder (or fielders) toward the umpire during a cricket game.

Referring to a crucial decision-making process, an appeal usually symbolizes the decisive moment before a batsman is given out or not, and the game can be resumed. Particularly engaging, the piece, beyond its aesthetics, serves as a metaphor whereby parallels can be drawn between aspects of the game and the mechanisms that define and regulate societal interactions, such as unfairness, power dynamics, among others. Additionally, symbols such as human figures and text fragments – characteristic of Cozier’s unique artistic and visual language, developed over time –recur, inscribed primarily on red, green, and black pennant flags – colors that recall liberation struggle movements across the African continent and the Middle East.

Billy Fowo

Turbulence (Version 2), 2021. Ink on paper, wooden slats. Installation view at the Stavanger Art Museum.

Photo: Markus Johansson.

Akinbode Akinbiyi

On a late afternoon of Carnival Friday, Akinbode Akinbiyi was walking down Três Rios Street when he was intrigued by a tangle of cables on an electric pole. In addition to the weight of the wiring, the pole held a sign indicating the direction of two regions in São Paulo: Dom Pedro Park, in the historic center, and Canindé, a neighborhood once portrayed by Maria Carolina de Jesus in Child of the Dark and now a refuge for the Bolivian community. This small fragment of everyday life on that street caught his attention, prompting him to capture the moment with a Rolleiflex camera, later remarking: “Thank you for waiting, André.” This is one of the first images from Akinbode Akinbiyi’s photographic essay commissioned for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo.

A street named after the meeting of three rivers became the estuary that the wanderer Bode chose to circumnavigate for six weeks in the city. This convergence of streets, people, experiences, and expectations is the main connective thread in Akinbode’s relationship with the cities he inhabits, visits, and photographs. It is what essentially makes him a street photographer, committed to capturing on the sensitive film of analog photography the particularities of the tacit agreement made by millions of people to live together in a megacity. A photographic practice Akinbode has pursued since the 1970s – a slow and continuous process that has already passed through Lagos, Cairo, Berlin, Dakar, Johannesburg, Chicago, Bamako, and others – and now São Paulo.

Casa do Povo, Bom Retiro, São Paulo, 2025. Medium format analog film, black-and-white, printed on Textile Decor Blockout double-sided. 200 × 200 cm.

At the meeting point of the rivers, Casa do Povo. The pace of a metropolis and the slow, reflective time of photographic thinking and making may seem opposed, but together they reveal the rhythms of the city and its people. As an experience aimed at expanding São Paulo’s social fabric, Akinbode Akinbiyi engaged with and followed the activities of the many groups, associations, and collectives that operate within the Casa do Povo cultural center in the Bom Retiro neighborhood: the chess club, Yiddish choir rehearsals, boxing training, the graphic workshop… What can one expect from a photographic essay about the people of São Paulo? What did this insane, conservative, and diverse city offer the photographer? Or what did it refuse to show him, naively believing it could hide its unique urban dynamics from Akinbode’s generous gaze? These questions arose upon realizing that, while the photo of the pole on Três Rios Street was being taken, it remained virtual – potential – and would be made actual in the exhibition space of the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, likely at the very moment you are reading this short text. Was the photograph of the meeting of the three rivers there?

André Pitol

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

This participation is supported by: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen –IFA and British Council, within the UK/Brazil Season of Culture 2025-2026

Casa do Povo, Bom Retiro, São Paulo, 2025. Medium format analog film, black-and-white, printed on Textile Decor Blockout double-sided. 200 × 200 cm.

Casa do Povo, Bom Retiro, São Paulo, 2025. Medium format analog film, black-and-white, printed on Textile Decor Blockout double-sided. 200 × 200 cm.

Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans’s photography carries a distinct poetic quality, emerging from his ability to capture the ephemeral, the personal, and the political with an unforced intimacy. Working across large-format prints, smaller photographic prints, sculptural objects, video projections, and publication projects, his images do more than just document; they create spaces of intimacy and connection. Tillmans´s camera elevates ordinary moments and their aftermath –a room after a party, the view out of a plane window, folds of paper – transforming them into visual poetry.

Venus Setting Four Days Before Conjunction With the Sun, 2025. Courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/ Cologne; Maureen Paley, London.

Iguazu, 2010. Courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin / Cologne; Maureen Paley, London.

His practice is a constant exploration of the technical and artistic capacities of photography, fueled with curiosity and compassionate perspective on the environment around him, and the rapport built with his subjects. His subjects –whether people, landscapes, or still lifes – are captured in a way that resists fixed meaning. The images suggest rather than dictate, allowing for ambiguity, interpretation, and emotional resonance. Through his viewpoint, both the immediacy of the now and the subtle undercurrents of modern existence encourage interpersonal proximity, where recognition, sympathy, companionship, and solidarity are possible between individual stories and societal narratives.

Nkule

Mabaso

This participation is supported by: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen –

Nile, 2018. Courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner, New York/Hong Kong; Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne; Maureen Paley, London.

Pélagie Gbaguidi

In the conclusion to one of his seminal essays, titled “People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg,” the sociologist AbdouMaliq Simone discusses the intensifying immiseration of African urban populations, highlighting the economic and cultural collaborations among the residents seemingly marginalized by urban life.1 Using the city of Johannesburg as a case study to discuss the increasing precarity numerous people in the ever-growing urban cities face worldwide, AbdouMaliq describes the situation as one that is “real and alarming,” further adding that for “increasing numbers of urban Africans, their cities no longer offer them the prospect of improving their livelihoods or modern ways of life.”2 Being it in the cities of Dakar, Johannesburg, São Paulo – or in Europe –we are constantly confronted by the precarity and fragility of our bodies within public space. Through her newly commissioned piece, Guardians of Cosmos (2025), the artist Pélagie Gbaguidi invites us to reflect on these urgent questions through an architectural and urban planning prism. The installation consists of tent-like structures that remind us of the makeshift shelters sprouting in the rapidly growing cities worldwide, caused by a plethora of ills, among which the rampant housing crises. Often built from recycled and found materials, these shelters, initially intended to be temporary solutions, usually become permanent ones, pushing their inhabitants into some sort of “permanent temporariness”.

Care, 2019–2020. Plastic flour sack, tarpaulin, wooden beams, embroidery with wool and cotton. 243,5 × 175 cm. Photo: Peter Cox. Courtesy of the artist and Kanal Pompidou, Brussels.

The Post-Traumatic Patriarchy (detail), 2024. Pigment and mixed media on cotton. Photo: Kristien Daem. Courtesy of the artist; Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo / Rio de Janeiro; and Goodman Gallery.

Displayed all across the space, the tent-like structures are made of wooden frames carrying paintings on canvas. The canvases are double-sided: on their reverse, we find hand-drawn floor plans and maps of typical West African houses, as well as, on one of them, a transcription of the preamble to the Brazilian Constitution, which enshrines housing as a fundamental right. These back sides unfold as a composite cartography of collective habitat – simultaneously imagined and inherited – that echoes traditional architectures from West Africa, as explored in Habiter un monde [Inhabit a World] (2005) by Jean-Paul Bourdier and Trinh T. Minh-ha. This gesture prompts us to reflect on the intersection of fundamental human rights and lived spatial realities, inscribed across various legal frameworks and everyday improvisations.

Numbered to five as a reference to the fingers of a hand, the installation metaphorically evokes the idea of giving someone in need a helping hand and thus confronts the audience with the insensitivity and lack of care given to a particular sphere of society in urban cityscapes, that is constantly relegated to the margins, and to a certain extent invisibilized due to the normalization of their precarious conditions.

Billy Fowo

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program

1. AbdouMaliq Simone, “People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg.” Public Culture, v.16, n.3, 2004, pp.407-429. 2. Ibid.

Raven Chacon, Iggor Cavalera, and Laima Leyton

From the series For Zitkála-Šá, 2017–2020. Lithograph. 27,9 × 21,6 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the O’Grady Foundation. © Raven Chacon. Courtesy of the artist and Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts.

Unlike the liturgy of a traditional mass, Voiceless Mass (2021) is not centered on the human voice. The work, which consecrated Raven Chacon, an artist born in the Navajo Diné Nation, as the first Native North American composer to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Music, is centered on the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee and its pipe organ. The building, with its imposing acoustic architecture and its symbolism, itself becomes a subtle resonant body of the conflicts it has perpetuated for centuries. As Chacon says, “this piece has been a kind of metaphor for the inaccessibility of voices throughout the history of the Church – and also the history of colonization to which the Church contributed. And, in the case of Indigenous peoples, that led to the loss of language itself.”1

Almost thirty years ago, the presence of the Indigenous voice as an expression of insurgent forces in Brazilian history took shape on Sepultura’s album Roots (1996).

On the tracks “Ratamahatta” and “Itsari,” the chants of the Xavante people cross the soundscape of heavy metal, breaking with the dominant aesthetics of the genre and bringing a generation of fans closer to Indigenous peoples’ struggles for their territories and ways of life. It was from the encounter between the trajectories of Raven Chacon, Iggor Cavalera, former drummer and founder of Sepultura, and Laima Leyton, a music producer based in London and

From the series For Zitkála-Šá, 2017–2020. Lithograph. 27,9 × 21,6 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the O’Grady Foundation. © Raven Chacon. Courtesy of the artist and Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts.

member of the duo Mixhell who is active in the intersections between performance, pedagogy, and sound activism, that the project to be presented at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo was born. Together with the Xavante musicians who took part in the recording of Roots, and with the local support of cacique Cipassé Xavante, from the village of Wederã (Canarana, Mato Grosso, Brazil), the artists are developing a multichannel composition that poetically undoes the rhythms of the city’s engines (“…undo the urban motor-rhythms of São Paulo”) to bring out the pulse of the earth and of the voices connected to it.

The critique of language as a power structure – which began in Voiceless Mass and expanded in the dialogue with Roots – goes even deeper in Chacon’s approach to writing music itself. The right to one’s own voice and language is an exercise in humanity. Just as Indigenous languages were suppressed by the imposition of European languages, the history of music has enshrined the traditional score as the legitimate form of sound writing. In For Zitkála-Šá (2017-2020), Chacon pays homage to thirteen Indigenous and Mestizo artists through graphic scores that function as sound portraits, composed with symbols, shapes, and instructions open to interpretation. By working with other forms of notation, performance, and musical recording, Chacon shows that the Western systematization and teaching methodology is only one of countless possibilities – and that it is not even adopted by the majority of people who practice music in the world.

Leonardo Matsuhei

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

1. Raven interview for ¡COLORES!. Available at: <www.youtube.com/ watch?v=5ryWiAEKdzI&t=205s>. Access: 2025.

Pol Taburet

There are many factors that force us to adapt our gaze to the enigmatic atmosphere of French artist Pol Taburet’s works. Starting with the artist’s syncretic references, which include Caribbean mythology, horror films, and even trap and hip-hop verses. All this, tilted against a backdrop of Western art history, results in a youthful update to our contemporary visual culture. But in addition to his personal repertoire, which can be difficult to notice at first glance, Taburet respects his creative instincts while working. Perhaps that’s why he manages to draw us in at the same time as repelling us from this liminal universe that he creates in the heat of the moment. He is not afraid to give us sensations that oscillate between fear, strangeness, and curiosity. His universe is inhabited by spirit beings with mysterious intentions. Made using airbrushing, the finish on their bodies, usually misshapen, reveals hypnotic textures that border on the supernatural. Disfigured, ghostly, yet humanoid, these beings in a state of profound mutation perform sometimes delirious situations. The surrounding environment looks like an even more terrifying substrate of the so-called liminal space. Famous among subgroups of

Elephant, 2024. Bronze. 260 × 145 × 100 cm. Photo: Gui Gomes. © Pol Taburet. Courtesy of Studio Pol Taburet.

chronically online youth, these are places of transition to which we don’t directly belong. However, they evoke ambiguous feelings of fear and familiarity. In response to this sentimental demand from Generation Z, of which the artist is also a member, his settings emulate rooms and corridors that only exist in the liminality between what we briefly recognize and what only comes from a hidden place. This splendid combination of factors is at odds with the references linked to Western painting, such as nods to the works of Francis Bacon. However, Taburet never lets this dialogue get lost in the evolutionary chronology of art history. Nor does he commit himself to representing the spiritual content of his works in an explanatory way. Instead, he makes his subjects beings of momentary meaning, without giving away details about the rituals and ceremonies they seem to carry out. We, as witnesses, are condemned to grope through this universe in search of answers, but in the uncertainty of finding them.

Wes Chagas

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program

Soldier, 2025. Bronze. 148 × 35 × 30 cm. Photo: Vincent Blesbois. © Pol Taburet. Courtesy of Studio Pol Taburet.

Coffin, 2025. Bronze. 120 × 64 × 63 cm. Photo: Vincent Blesbois. © Pol Taburet. Courtesy of Studio Pol Taburet.

Cynthia Hawkins

Cynthia Hawkins’s painting is a profound case of artistic experimentation, which manifests in a particular way in each of her works – each one different and diverse, yet unified in their creative drive. Her practice unfolds like a continuous exercise, perhaps aimed at developing skill or building a repertoire and vocabulary around what captivates her. Movement and the notion of process guide the artist – a continuous process she has pursued since the 1970s.

Hawkins’s primary artistic interest lies in abstraction. And for her, it is not merely a practice of abstract painting, but of abstraction itself. Her relationship with abstraction is long-standing, and for her, it is also an act of resistance, insofar as abstraction requires from the viewer a sustained and attentive gaze.

With an artistic career spanning more than five decades, Hawkins has lived through a moment in the United States art context in which “abstraction performed crucial work

Living Spare, 1975. Oil on paper. 127 × 127 cm.

within and upon the flows of Black culture by opening it to the same contingencies that fragmented modernist culture, providing it with visual and verbal languages for deviation – languages that distanced themselves from tangible references identifiable with mass politics.”1 Her production and presence in that scene can be understood within a broader framework of abstraction, community, and Blackness.

The elements that make up Hawkins’s paintings – lines, shapes, colors – are, and continue to be, living developments of earlier drawings, such as mathematical notations and algebraic references, practiced on the surface of the canvas. Over time, these transformed into new situations and fields touched by abstraction, such as science, literature, philosophy, and music – always gravitating toward organic geometric abstraction.

It is no coincidence that historic works like Air Smart (1975) and Stars that Fell into the Sea (1975) bear such titles. This notion of geometric abstraction arises from her engagement with the material of painting – as an investigation, for instance, into the depth of the canvas, where the weight and lightness of the compositional elements both accumulate and float.

André Pitol

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Menagerie of Players, 1975. Oil on canvas. 116 × 206 cm.

1. Darby English, 1971: A Year in the Life of Color. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016, p.8.

Márcia Falcão

Márcia Falcão’s artistic production delves deeply into the realm of painting, positioning the body as both an extension and a disruptive force within the figurative. Through expressive and dense gestures, her work reveals a profound investigation into the pictorial medium, as the body is not merely depicted but becomes a field of tension and experimentation.

The artist is known for her large-scale works, in which she precisely combines both figurative and abstract elements. Her creative process begins with a central element that guides the construction of the planes and composition. Her palette is marked by intense, vibrant colors – reds, blacks, and various shades of brown – which not only express the diversity of bodies and how their corporeality operates in space, but also gain strength through the use of thick layers of oil paint, oil stick, pastels, and charcoal. These materials lend depth and texture to the works, pushing corporeal forms to the limits of the figurative.

Posição 3 [Position 3] from the series Ioga psicológica [Psychological Yoga], 2022. Oil on canvas. 120 × 100 cm. Photo: Eduardo Ortega. Courtesy of the artist and Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo / Rio de Janeiro.

Falcão’s paintings exhibit a remarkable mastery of color, used to construct layers and represent a wide range of skin tones. The artist demonstrates a refined control of light and shadow, emphasizing corporeal details that guide the viewer’s gaze. Far from being restricted to realistic representation, Falcão explores the expressiveness of the body, distorting and fragmenting it to reveal the stories and complexities that traverse it. Her striking and expressive brushstrokes make the gesture visible, adding texture, density, and movement to her works. While the corporeal forms remain recognizable, they exist in a liminal state, dissolving into swirls and pictorial masses that challenge fixed definitions. This approach tensions not only the viewer’s perception but also the very pictorial and compositional signs of painting itself.

Ana Paula Lopes

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Ginga from the series Capoeira em paleta alta [Capoeira in a High Palette], 2024. Charcoal, oil and oil stick on canvas. 160 × 120 cm. Photo: Paul Salveson. Courtesy of the artist and Night Gallery, Los Angeles.

Passinho: memória radical [Passinho: Radical Memory], 2024. Oil and oil stick on canvas. 152 × 145 cm. Photo: Eduardo Ortega. Courtesy of the artist and Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo / Rio de Janeiro.

Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide)

The pieces by Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide) operate within the realms of healing, belonging, and historical reparation as they dissect Eurocentric systems of categorization and racialization, as well as their penetration into various levels of contemporary Western society. Through works in various media, such as video, writing, immersive installations, and painting, the artist creates kinds of spiritual evocations that communicate the immaterial, revealing political and memory dimensions often overshadowed by coloniality. In Dismemberment (2024), European Enlightenment and modern ideals are personified in the figure of a gallery owner, called Europa, portrayed by the German actress Susanne Sachsse. Her behavior and speech astutely expose the violences that structure these principles. Chang, in the work, represents an artist setting up the installation in the gallery of Sachsse’s character, and their interactions illustrate the normalization of the persistent racialization within European society that upholds colonial hierarchies.

The exposed abuse and imbalances generated by this interaction culminates in a ritual where the accompanying deities of the artist reveal themselves in the exhibition space, and the Korean gods Daesin Halmeoni, the Great Spirit Grandmother, and Sansin, the Mountain God, perform a healing through Chang on the body of the sick Europe. The ritual is inspired by the traditional Ssitgimgut practice, in which a person is dismantled by

Dismemberment, 2024. Film installation (video, 45’), (ritual) objects, paintings. Installation view at Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam.

objects, paintings.

the gods, and what no longer serves them – such as greed, arrogance, abuse, or illness – is removed, leading to rebirth. Dismemberment works along the invisible lines connecting ancestry and spirituality to Chang’s artistic production, but also those connecting individuals immersed in the process of displacement from their original territories to Europe. Texts and images overlap in an anamnesis of the genealogy and settlement of generations of women living under European hegemony, pronouncing a possible end to the cycles of violence that afflict these bodies.

This participation is supported by: Mondriaan Fund, Centro Cultural Coreano, Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme and Kunstinstituut Melly

Rather than centering on displacement or the search for spirituality, Dismemberment presents a shamanic and political allegory in which Enlightenment ideals – long used to justify colonial domination – are embodied in the figure of the gallerist Europa, representing Europe itself. The work shifts the ethnographic gaze away from those who have been racialized, and instead examines the structures and mentalities of those who racialize. The installation comprises two interconnected spaces: a film room and a room that mirrors the gallery depicted on screen. This space acts both as an art gallery – playing with the ethnographic gaze – and as a ritual room where viewers encounter Korean shamanic art objects such as a large fan, paintings, phallic forms, and paper prayers, creating a ritual environment that blurs fiction and ceremony. Through this meta-structure and the culminating Ssitgimgut ritual –in which sick Europa is dismembered and cleansed by ancestral spirits – the work enacts a symbolic healing of the colonial body and proposes the possibility of its transformation.

Bruna Fernanda

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Dismemberment, 2024. Film installation (video, 45’), (ritual)

Alain Padeau

Calliphora Gold, 2020. Performative sculpture with motion-activated mechanism, original love letters, red roses. 210 × 380 × 120 cm. Photo: Jacques Kuyten.

Moka BOB Sound System (2025) is a sound-based research project by Alain Padeau that culminates in a sculptural musical instrument. It is crafted through the combination of bows, metal strings, and spherical acoustic chambers. The geometric architecture of the truncated icosahedron allows the artist to explore the scale of the acoustic chamber, transforming a handcrafted object into a work of art whose configuration and activation evoke other kindred instruments.

The system of sound propagation – created by a taut wire stretched across the ends of a bow and connected to a spherical acoustic chamber – belongs to the genealogy of plucked string instruments. Among its key predecessors is the mvett, found among the Fang, Béti, and Bulu peoples –Bantu-language cultural groups distributed across Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and Cameroon. Dozens of related instruments, such as the ngoni, gurmi, goje, guembri, masengo, bolon, and kora, echo the mvett ’s construction model. These instruments sometimes take on more Islamic forms – resembling the lute – while always preserving the function originally performed by the gourd in the acoustic chamber. From this system derives the berimbau, a fundamental instrument in the practice of capoeira – an embodied art that blends combat, play, and dance, combining rhythm and physical agility. Capoeira was developed in Brazil by enslaved Africans and their descendants. Also derived from this lineage is the bobre, used on Réunion Island to accompany singing, dance, and the music of maloya – a genre born from the interaction between

African and French musical traditions, with strong rhythmic and linguistic roots from East Africa. Thus, the bobre is part of a complex diasporic apparatus which, like capoeira, was designed to offer protection and ease the suffering of bodies exploited by enslaved labor.

Of Réunionese origin, Alain Padeau revisits the therapeutic effects of the bobre, drawing not only on its ancestral morphology, tracing back to the African mvett, but also on an immersive exploration of the melodic and hypnotic resonance of the single-string instrument. In the Moka BOB Sound System, the artist merges principles of plucked and struck strings: the hand that would traditionally hold the instrument is now free, while the body of the instrument is supported autonomously – either on a stand or directly upon its acoustic chamber.

The arpeggiated playing of metal strings, inherited from guitar practice, heightens the tactile and sonic engagement with string vibration. Whether muted or allowed to resonate freely, the plucked strings of this new instrument open a path from monody to polyphony – since single-string instruments are, by nature, monodic. Moka BOB Sound System thus explores new dimensions of sound perception by embracing improvisation and unpredictability in the transformation of sound into musical arrangement.

Renato Menezes

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Le collier d’esclave (Mémorial Abolition de l’esclavage – 20 décembre)

[The Slave’s Collar (Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery – December 20)], 1999. Corten steel. Place du Débarcadère, Saint-Paul. Photo: Alain Padeau.

Chapter 4 Currents of Nurturing and Plural Cosmologies

The questions of care and nurturing within and beyond our species and cultures are grounding for this chapter. If we exist interrelationally within a vast ecology of beings, then our existence is contingent on the existence of other beings, animate and inanimate alike. The collaborative interactions between multiple species and their environments within certain ecologies are important for the survival and progress not only of specific species but of ecology at large. This chapter concerns itself with possibilities, philosophies, and practices of nurturing that are decidedly non-patriarchal, that are generous, reciprocal, non-exploitative, matriarchal, and kind – like Amina Claudine Myers sings in “African Blues” or Elza Soares does in “A mulher do fim do mundo” [The Woman of the End of the World]. Gentleness toward the self and others, despite the odds that are the pillars

of the capitalist world we have inherited and continue to propagate. The works in this chapter also concern themselves with the care for a multiplicity of myths and mythologies, the care for bodies and spirits alike, for histories and languages, and the importance of fabulation as key for human existence, and for the upholding of the relations between humans and other beings within these ecologies and other cosmologies. Through lullabies, folktales, pop culture, personal testimonial, interviews, ritual practices, community-based activities, symbolism etc., the works directly or tangentially manifest, discuss, critique, comment upon collaborative or competitive, symbiotic or predatory relations between humans, as well as between humans and animals, climate, land, water, and our biosphere at large.

Laure Prouvost

Laure Prouvost is a storyteller. She has developed her practice originally coming from structural film toward a unique and sensual form of expanded cinema, constantly testing the potentiality of imagination on the perception of reality and questioning inherited and dominant conventions of perception. Her work combines drawing, sculpture, and moving image, recurrently reinventing the conventions of the used medium.

She uses media technologies in an inventive way, attributing human traits to them, such as emotional or sensual sensations, and incorporates organic materials, such as plants, as well as highly industrial, creating immersive multimedia installations that stimulate the visitor’s perception and imagination through a multisensory experience. The artist explores the delicate relationships between human perception and the vast, often unseen forces that shape our existence – other-than-human forces that extend from the subatomic level of quantum mechanics to the expansive, ever-changing dynamics of cosmic and planetary movements.

For the Bienal, Prouvost has assembled a new site-specific, delicate chandelier-like, kinetic multimedia installation at the center of the Pavilion that connects the architectural

Pulled from Below, C’est la Mer à Boire [Pulled from Below, It’s Like Drinking the Sea], 2021. Installation view at Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Brussels.

and conceptual levels of the exhibition. The installation is inspired by Evaristo’s poem and its suggestion to allow oneself to explore other paths, and ways of seeing, perceiving, thinking, moving and ultimately being, and be guided by all the senses. Its central component is a climbing plant that has been encouraged to grow freely and find its own paths for the duration of the exhibition, and whose growing sounds are amplified in the space. As it is typical for Prouvost, this living core is added by further organic material, such as found dried plants and seeds – that might fall on the visitors when passing through the Bienal to be carried and spread out into the world. The natural seeds will be joined with inorganic materials, including her iconic glass boobs, to seduce and stimulate the visitor’s imagination. Following ideas around “trespassing,” the installation explores notions of control, sensuality, and the vast field of the possible.

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program

Deliasofia Zacarias

WE FELT A STAR DYING, 2025. Installation view at Kraftwerk Berlin. Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and co-commissioned by OGR Torino. Photo: Andrea Rossetti.

Hovering Caress Amère [Hovering Bitter Caress], 2022. Installation presented as both stage and autonomous artwork in the exhibition The Act of Breathing, Horst Arts & Music Festival, Vilvoorde. Photo: Eline Willaert.

Kader Attia

Kader Attia is a French-Algerian multidisciplinary artist whose research-based approach has been instrumental for decolonial strategies – to backlash colonial history and museums. His interest and subjects found a turning point since he focused on creating tools for repair and care, either of objects, bodies, representations, and memories. La Valise oubliée [The Forgotten Suitcase] (2024) interweaves individual and collective histories of the Algerian War (1954-1962), during which hundreds of thousands of Algerians were killed. This recent video work by Kader Attia takes the suitcase as a dynamic metaphor of both the past unveiled and the future to be edited (playing with the potentialities of an unfinished narrative). Attia unpacks three suitcases, three individual stories that interweave threads of our collective history: those of French artist and Algerian sympathizer Jean-Jacques Lebel, feminist decolonial thinker Françoise Vergès, and Attia’s mother. The memorabilia removed from the luggage evokes intense, sometimes traumatic memories – from a secret letter by a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front (entrusted to Lebel) to a photo album belonging to the controversial lawyer Jacques Vergès (Françoise Vergès’s uncle), who defended Algerian militants during the war, to photographs of the artist’s mother. By juxtaposing different narrative levels and threads, Attia tells the story both of his family and of the countless nameless men and women who resisted and organized in the shadows against colonialism.

As often in Kader Attia’s work, the awakening of consciousness about the immensity of the destruction and loss under colonialism (either through ecology, architecture, or economy…) goes with a traumatic experience of counting,

reenacting, and archiving the dead or the wound. Hence a general ghostly memory is efficiently enacted in his installations and video works; as exercises of exorcism.

Having grown up between France and Algeria, Kader Attia uses his own transcultural experience (including the neocolonial suburban lower class condition) as an introspective research eventually becoming a tool against neocolonial power structures. From The Repair of Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures (2012), shown at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, to the recent Un descenso al paraiso [A Descent into Paradise] (2025), at MUAC, Mexico City, Kader Attia’s art of repair walks on the thin line between dis-membering and re-membering.

Morad Montazami

La Valise oubliée [The Forgotten Suitcase], 2024. Video stills. Video, color, sound, 25’. Produced by Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains.

Myrlande Constant

Lakou Zanj Yo, 2025. Beads and sequins on fabric. 121,9 × 132,1 cm. Photo: Armando Vaquer. © Myrlande Constant. Courtesy of CENTRAL FINE, Miami; and El-Saieh Gallery, Port-au-Prince.

The spiritual bounties of Myrlande Constant’s Iwa are rendered in sequins, embellishments, beads, and decorative tambour, that reflect the role these spirits play in our daily lives. Myrlande Constant has said that she is guided by her Iwa, or her spiritual guides and intermediaries, in creating the compositions of her works. As a young woman, Myrlande Constant took up a formal Haitian art form known as drapo, or “flags” depicting Iwa, which later became the basis of her art practice. While the original art form primarily addresses the spiritual realm, Myrlande Constant often connects the spiritual realm with everyday life, emphasizing the interconnection between the sacred and the earthly. This is Myrlande Constant’s first participation in the Bienal de São Paulo.

The lush compositions form landscapes of historical scenes and fabulatory, spiritual spaces. From a level of method, while the original art form is traditionally rendered solely in sequins and textiles, Myrlande Constant has centered the use of beads and tambourine in her rich compositions. These elements allow Constant to imbue small details into the figures, expanding the theoretical capacities of the embellished scenes. Her compositions usually involve a frame

of tambour stitches, representing symbols, offerings, and sacred objects. Her composition features a central figure or scene, and as the eye wanders, one finds an infinite sequence of symbols peppered across the painting.

To achieve these intricate works, Myrlande Constant must stretch the cloth over a frame, and stitch with the panel upside down, meaning that she cannot see her progress until she flips the work. She can only feel the sequins with the tip of her fingers. Given the size of many of her compositions, some works are created by a team of over a dozen artists working simultaneously. Yet these lush paintings are unique among the drapo tradition, bringing a feminine gaze to an art form that was almost exclusively practiced among men. Myrlande Constant becomes a vessel, a theorist, and a historian, articulating stories from one realm to the other. Her works reflect cosmologies, both seen and unseen, that anchor Haitian spiritual life.

Margarita Lila Rosa

Ossangnegouéguimalor (after Duval-Carrié), 2006. Beads and sequins on fabric. 109,2 × 127 cm.

Photo: George Echevarria. © Myrlande Constant, Courtesy CENTRAL FINE, Miami; and El-Saieh Gallery, Port-au-Prince.

Joar Nango with the Girjegumpi crew

Joar Nango is an artist and architect from the Sami people – Indigenous to the territory now divided between Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. His way of thinking about the construction of spaces, evidenced in his works, reveals a knowledge rooted in practices intertwined with everyday life, as opposed to technical and formal knowledge. The architecture proposed by Nango stems from a long-standing relationship with the environment and from the knowledge imbued in the Sami way of life.

Based on appropriation and hybridization, the ephemeral and nomadic structures of the Sami peoples make use of traditional materials and techniques, such as animal skins, fabrics, and untreated and natural wood, as well as industrial elements and scrap metal, adapted to each context’s requirements. The use of these architectural solutions in Nango’s work reveals a living tradition, similar to a moving watercourse: it molds itself to the variations in the terrain, mixes with other bodies of water, but maintains a continuous flow.

Dubbed by the artist with the concept of indigenuity (Indigenous ingenuity), this architectural intelligence dismantles dichotomies between technological progress and ancestral knowledge, while at the same time reclaims practical creativity and traditional knowledge as legitimate and sophisticated ways of building the world.

Skievvar (Window Made from Fish-Guts), 2019. Installation view at the Chicago Biennale of Architecture. Photo: Cory Dewald.

A House for All Cosmologies,

At the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Nango is presenting an offshoot of the Girjegumpi project, developed over about ten years. It is a Sami architecture library, a nomadic space for socializing and collaboration that brings together publications on art, architecture, design, activism, decolonial theories, and Sami knowledge. Incorporating elements from the local context, the work brings together the knowledge, bibliography, and construction techniques of Indigenous peoples, quilombolas, and manguebeat, as well as materials collected in the vicinity of the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion. The space, which is permeable, tactile, and geared toward conviviality, is made up of shelves housing books on territorial rights, animal time, and ancestral knowledge, built with materials in direct dialogue with the content they support.

By combining tradition and contemporaneity, the artist challenges the paradigms of formal and industrial architecture, proposing instead a logic of adaptation, reuse, and appropriation as a political tool. His work subverts the residues and the logic of Western consumption into ingenious solutions, through a strategy of resistance that makes use of the incorporation and repurposing of materials, symbols, and signs from dominant cultures.

Lucas Goulart

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

This participation is supported by: Office for Contemporary Art Norway, The Swedish Embassy in Brazil and Royal Norwegian Embassy in Brasília

2022. Installation view at the rooftop of the National Museum of Norway, Oslo. Photo: National Museum of Norway.

Vilanismo

Vilanismo is a brotherhood of Black artists formed at the end of 2021 with the aim of challenging the Western visual arts system by bringing race, gender, and class into tension in their artistic work.

The term “villain” carries multiple meanings, including wickedness or someone lacking in wealth, which have historically been associated in Brazil with Black men. It is from this symbolic charge that Vilanismo is constituted. Among the elements that make up its conceptual framework are the figure of the trickster and the MC, alongside references such as the periphery, the mutirão (collective effort), Black struggle movements, and other Black figures from the visual arts. These references collaborate in the aesthetic and political construction of the brotherhood, challenging the ways in which Black male subjectivities have been systematically denied, dehumanized, and reduced to the status of things. This image was shaped by a humanist project that, although it proclaimed ideals of equality and progress, actively contributed to exclusion and violence.

Cortejo Negro [Black Procession], 2024. Photo: Rodrigo Zaim.

For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Vilanismo is expanding and re-signifying the idea of the workspace, the right to land, and conspiracy by presenting the installation Os meninos não sei que juras fraternas fizeram [The Boys I Don’t Know What Fraternal Oaths They Made] (2025) – a title borrowed from the short story “A gente combinamos de não morrer” [We Agreed Not to Die], written by Conceição Evaristo.1 The proposal invites the public to immerse themselves in a subjectivity marked by artistic and intellectual expressiveness, in which the studio materializes in furniture, productions, and dialogues, stimulating the imagination and making the viewer experience the universe of Vilanismo. In the installation, the “villains”2 – as they call themselves – articulate systems, knowledge, actions, and symbolic struggles through artistic production. The brotherhood thus reveals and reconfigures new possibilities for Black masculinities and humanization, bringing to light intellectuality, fragility, differences, flaws, and the possibility of a historically denied love.

Ana Paula Lopes

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

This participation is supported by: The Order of New Arts

1. Conceição Evaristo, Olhos d’água. Rio de Janeiro: Pallas, 2014.

2. Currently, Vilanismo is formed by Carinhoso, Daniel Ramos, Denis Moreira, Diego Crux, Guto Oca, Rafa Black, Ramo, Renan Teles, Robson Marques, and Rodrigo Zaim.

Photo: Jardiel Carvalho.

Gervane de Paula

Gervane de Paula creates his artwork with a strong graphic character across multiple platforms, such as paintings, drawings, photography, installations, and objects. His work carries a potent ecological appeal, alternating between melancholic tones and a powerful denunciatory charge. His festive scenes from his neighborhood in Cuiabá, for example, complement the specific reality of the Brazilian cerrado, while also vehemently addressing the socio-environmental disasters caused by large-scale agribusiness, unregulated mining, and their inextricable legacies of violence. The artist draws from and operates within an aesthetic shaped by images of mass consumption and the use of everyday materials from the Brazilian Midwest, alongside assertive references to art history. A member of the Geração 80, De Paula stood alongside artists such as Leonilson, Leda Catunda, Beatriz Milhazes, and Luiz Zerbini in advocating for vibrant and provocative painting, in contrast to the hyper-intellectualism of Brazilian conceptual art in the 1970s.

Bacia hidrográfica [Watershed], 2016. Steel and oil on canvas. ø 80 cm. Photo: Fred Gustavos.

Cuiabrasa a caminho do sol [Cuiabrasa on the Way to the Sun], 2025. Oil on canvas. 350 × 165 cm. Photo: Marcus Mesquita.

Droga de arte [Art Drug], 2018. Painting on wood. 130 × 48 × 55 cm. Photo: Jaime Acioli.

In his works, De Paula creates pseudo-fictional narratives depicting the hostility of large landowners and defenders of unchecked agribusiness when confronted with the critical questioning of art. Seeing his works as political and environmental denunciations that would prevent them from continuing their illicit activities, these figures retaliate with brutal force, using the privileges of their power. De Paula, understanding art as a trap, often depicts shotguns, dead artists, rivers of blood, and plaques that honor political and environmental activists, courageously persisting in the denunciatory and critical powers of the artist figure. Beyond environmental crimes, such as large-scale deforestation, pollution, and the extinction of numerous species of fauna and flora, De Paula also addresses the social crime caused by the dynamics of agribusiness, drug trafficking on the border between Mato Grosso and Bolivia, structural racism, police authoritarianism, and political corruption. At times, with sarcasm, he even transposes certain power dynamics and hostilities into the relationships within the art market itself. The artist has always been a victim of geographical isolation: living in Cuiabá, far from the Brazilian Southeast axis where the hegemonic market agents and art critics operate, his career, spanning over four decades, was long invisible and underestimated. Nevertheless, his production has remained relentless and poignant, never faltering.

Mateus Nunes

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Sharon Hayes

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Comizi d’amore [Love Meetings] (1964) unfolds a tapestry of psychological truths captured through direct, unflinching questions posed on the streets of Italy. He lays bare the complexities of the public’s attitudes toward sexuality and the uneasy tension between tradition and modernity. In confronting the discomforts surrounding intimate yet public themes, the film reveals the deep-seated anxieties and moral conflicts that lurk beneath everyday life.

More than fifty years later, Sharon Hayes isolates and expands on Pasolini’s questioning style and shot compositions to interview individuals and groups for her video series Ricerche [Research] (2019-2024). In Ricerche, she offers a thought-provoking reflection on the power of public conversation, using candid, unscripted dialogue to explore the intersections of personal experience, political discourse, and societal norms. Ultimately, she exposes the intricate web of unspoken truths that shape human relationships and identity through these unreserved exchanges. Hayes weaves complex layers of intimacy, politics, and identity through forms of documentary and performance. In Ricerche, she engages deeply with language, often using it as a tool to create an aesthetic of tension – between the spoken word and silence, between public and private Ricerche: four, 2024. Installation view at the Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (March – August 2024). Photo: Ron Amstutz. Courtesy of the artist; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Tanya Leighton, Berlin and Los Angeles.

spheres, and between individual experience and collective history. There’s an underlying rhythm in her work, a pacing that both challenges and stretches the viewer’s perception of time, meaning, and experience, elevating the mundane to the realm of the profound. Throughout her four-part series, Hayes pushes the boundaries of documentaries and performances into an unfiltered view of humanity. In an era in which street interviews are a daily fixture on digital social platforms, Hayes’s meticulous archival process and candid interviews challenge the boundaries of love, intimacy, and the politics surrounding sexuality, urging viewers to confront the contradictions of our own desires and social structures. Ricerche invites us to witness the complexity of human experience, in which every word and silence carries the weight of both the individual and the collective, the private and the public. In its poetic ambiguity, Hayes beckons us to reflect on how we speak, love, and remember, leaving us with the lingering question: how do we navigate the spaces between us?

Deliasofia Zacarias

Ricerche: two, 2020. Video still. HD 3.2K, color, sound; 38’47”. Pictured (from left to right): Ken Gabriel, Courtnei “Luckey” Townson, Charise “CJ” Blacksher (on microphone), D’Angela Marie “Deezy” Ricks. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton, Berlin and Los Angeles.

Ricerche: three, 2013. Video still. HD video, color, sound; 38’. Pictured (from left to right): Jasmine Brown, Laakan McHardy, Paola Lopez, Anarkalee Perera, Zehra Ali Khan, Sara Amjad. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton, Berlin and Los Angeles.

Trương Công Tùng

Trươ ng Công Tùng’s works desist from transparent finality. His diverse body of mixed-media works – moving images, installations, and lacquer paintings – cultivates nonlinear narratives across different sites. This forms a synergic ecosystem that can be activated against the monotonous view of history, as he contemplates the atmosphere enshrouding a speck of soil or peers into the interstices of pixels. His aesthetic is one of superimposition and dissolution, hinged upon the metaphorical tendon that links fragmented layers of memories of a landscape, a person, an object. Trươ ng’s installation at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo marks a pivotal moment where his material-based practice incorporates sonic elements. In an ethereal landscape made of wooden beehives salvaged from bee farms across the artist’s hometown in Central Highlands, Vietnam, Trươ ng embeds sensors into objects – a hybrid between organic materials and technological gadgets. Scattered on the ground are also found and repurposed objects from the Highlands: lacquered vessels, ocher-toned textile dyed with red basanite soil, musical instruments fashioned from calabash, and a termite mound covered in gold.

When nothingness becomes an echo of something and something is an echo of nothing… (Seven breaths), 2025 – ongoing. Mixed media installation in the artist’s studio STUDIO AS A LIVING GARDEN. Honey bee boxes, mushrooms, rubber beads, lacquered gourds, sap, soil, sand, stones, sound, silk, steel, sensor, water, air, light, ash, dust, machinery, time, temperature... Photo: Truong Minh Tu. Courtesy of Trương Công Tùng Studio.

As audiences walk around in Trươ ng’s locus amoenus, observing his cornucopia of foraged items, open your ears and allow them to take in a spectral orchestra. Any flicking sounds of an invisible tongue? A chortle of unknown birds? The drops of rainwater? Or perhaps the whispers of mountainous spirits. Drawing inspirations from Indigenous folklore in Central Highlands, where jungle explorers might be enchanted and led astray by the sound of non-human entities, the artist simulates folk wisdom through sensorial engagement: as audiences move, the sensors detect their presence and emit sound in response. Positioning the act of listening as a connective medium on par with seeing, the installation plays with the concept of a chance encounter, where sounds not only invoke the elusive presence of phantasmal beings but also trigger our primordial imagination. Trươ ng’s work thus questions humanity’s current fixation on visuals as a method of world perception and retunes our subconscious to the spontaneous yet tantalizing presence of sounds.

Hung Duong

This participation is supported by: Tanoto Art Foundation

Lidia Lisbôa

series Tetas

It takes creativity to cook, to work, to be in a relationship, to live. Lidia Lisbôa was born in Vila Guarani, a community in the countryside of the state of Paraná, near the city of Terra Roxa, Brazil, and has been reinventing herself ever since. You also have to be creative to make things come to life. Her artistic research often unfolds in a sensitive reconstruction of memory and of a body prior to the present moment, exploring multiple media, such as sculpture, drawing, installation, and performance, in an expanded understanding of what sewing is.

Birth and transformation are recurring themes in her works, whose titles include words such as “womb” and “cocoon.” In the series Tetas que deram de mamar ao mundo [Breasts That Nursed the World] (2015-2025), Lisbôa pays homage to breastfeeding women with gigantic monuments to motherhood itself. Large breasts, of different colors, in which humanity finds itself again. They are voluminous crochet pieces that establish a territory of active welcome, from where life continues to gush forth: strong, warm, and different. The Tetas que deram de mamar ao mundo are also multiple and strange bodies that exceed themselves, inseparable members of the world. The scraps emerge and plunge back into a network of close knots, made to be seen. The mend is the highlight here. More than that, just as mothers give their milk to babies and thus share with them life in its essence, the patch here is the reason for and origin of all the work. It’s impossible to know where one fabric ends and the others begin, but

From the

que deram de mamar ao mundo [Breasts That Nursed the World], 2022. Crochet on fabric. Photo: Filipe Berndt.

there are differences between them. The bands colored in skin tones – egg yellow, orange and clay brown, silver, blood red, flesh pink – hold their differences, are bound together. They support and form the chest through which one strand of itself, which touches the ground, and four others, which remain suspended, flow toward the earth.

The naturalness with which the artist expands the fabric of the material shows in her gesture the dimension of an everyday experience that she articulates uniquely. By weaving stories instead of narrating them linearly, she reverberates common anxieties, fears, and desires, often hidden or concealed by society. In this way, she makes sewing a choice, a strategy for survival, for recovering herself, and for building memories. Whether in installations, ceramics, or drawings, Lisbôa’s works insistently extend her own political, sensual, and artistic body, constituting a presence that spreads and unreservedly occupies the space around her.

Luiza Marcolino

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

From the series Tetas que deram de mamar ao mundo [Breasts That Nursed the World], 2018. Crochet on fabric. Installation view at the exhibition Nascente, Solar dos Abacaxis, Rio de Janeiro. Photo: Renato Mangolin.

From the series Tetas que deram de mamar ao mundo [Breasts That Nursed the World], 2020. Crochet on fabric. 185 × 183 × 114 cm. Photo: Filipe Berndt.

Hao Jingban

The video I understand (2020), by Hao Jingban, opens with a simple message: “To my friend,” recorded in the artist’s own voice. This intimate dedication sets the tone for the entire 21-minute film, which unfolds through archival footages, news reports, and social media excerpts from a recent past that is as turbulent as it is thought-provoking – raising questions about how we behave and, above all, how we act in the face of impending, widespread violence. The documentary serves as a kind of testimony. At the height of the pandemic, numerous sociopolitical tensions were unleashed, and class and racial inequalities became starkly visible. Amid the crisis, the Black Lives Matter movement erupted, and Hao incorporated archival footage of demonstrations in the United States in the work. The teachings, conflicts, and points of consensus of the movement are presented and shared empathetically with the audience. These images are interwoven with a recording of Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln performing the song “Tears for Johannesburg,” as well as Nina Simone’s famous statement that “an artist’s duty is to reflect the times” – two different articulations of the pursuit of freedom and fraternity.

The work was created during an artist residency that Hao undertook in Berlin during the first year of the covid-19 pandemic. I understand thus emerged as a direct outcome of her experience as a Chinese artist facing intense racial discrimination from the West toward Chinese citizens. Hao found solidarity by joining a movement that spoke out against segregation and racial discrimination. I understand resonates with various other projects of collaboration and solidarity that emerged between Black and Asian artists during critical historical moments of the 20th century.

André Pitol

I understand, 2020. Video stills. HD video, sound, color; 21’. © Courtesy of the artist and Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong.

Meriem Bennani

Meriem Bennani received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cooper Union (New York) in 2012 after receiving her Master’s in animation from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (Paris) in 2011. Moving between the aesthetics of reality television and documentary footage combined with post-internet animations and visual tricks, Bennani’s videos and installations touch upon subjects of diasporic experience, cultural hybridization, and language boundaries. Her works often dramatize and reenact neo-orientalist symbols and trends – such as the Kaftan, the Chicha, or the Oriental dance – which become reframed by a diversity of characters (either inspired from reality or from digital worlds) i.e., through social media, science fiction, and a strong sense of the absurd and the ironic. Bennani’s approach to installation-making is highly experimental and makeshift, claiming for spontaneity and playfulness, as they are based on a multisensory engagement for the spectator – who becomes part of the installation by going through different layers of images and sounds, in a kaleidoscopic experience. Functioning in many ways as multimedia catalysts of our contemporary digital neo-pop culture, her installations make us aware of our role and agency over the fatality of passive consumerism in the age of social media and immediacy.

Life on the CAPS, 2018–2022. Video stills. Video, color, sound; 75’. Courtesy of the artist; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles / New York; and Lodovico Corsini, Brussels.

Typical of Bennani’s practice, her work Mission Teens (2019) raises the critical question of French neocolonialism and soft power over Morocco through the educational system. In part through pop cultural references and anthropomorphized singing houses of gentrified neighborhoods, Bennani follows a group of young Moroccan teenagers from Rabat going to the French school and reflects upon the influence of France in their lives.

Conceived as a utopic space, Bennani’s eight-channel video installation Life on the CAPS (2018-2019) brings us to a preposterous future where immigration is reduced to an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, to begin a new society. Here the whole island of the CAPS is a performative metaphor for how we think of diasporic movements. Indeed Bennani’s most prolific question has been probably: how can we overcome the binary identity politics of assimilation and belongingness through experimenting a third space, the space in-between, mixing and translating locations and cultures.

Morad Montazami

Life on the CAPS, 2018–2022. Video stills. Video, color, sound; 75’. Courtesy of the artist; François Ghebaly, Los Angeles / New York; and Lodovico Corsini, Brussels.

This participation is supported by: Arab Fund for Arts and Culture

Juliana dos Santos

Juliana dos Santos’s research is based on her curiosity about the intertwining of the blue color of the Clitoria ternatea flower and the Black and Afro-diasporic experience in Brazil. Her work is driven by a desire to challenge the limiting Eurocentric traditions about perception and representation through the exploration of sensory expansions. Blue came to the artist during a meditation in a Buddhist temple, an event in which she saw the ajña chakra, known as the “third eye.” This vision, however, was not retinal, but synesthetic, emphasizing the possibility of visualizing something not through the eyes, but through a sensory experience.

Blue, usually associated with states of elevation, beauty, and intangibility in certain cultural contexts, is present in the artist’s work through complex stages of processing the Clitoria ternatea flower, cultivated by a family from São Félix, in the Recôncavo Baiano, with whom she has collaborated for years: Nilton Cesar dos Santos and Edilene Costa de Jesus dos Santos. These processes are analogous to the traditions of indigo dyeing and textile dyeing on the African continent, or even the history of the blues, the musical manifestation of the Black experience in the context of the United States. Just as immateriality and impermanence are fundamental to Dos Santos, the blue note is central to the blues: it is a dissonant note, considered out of tune as it defies the rigidity of the pentatonic scale, purposely used to amplify the emotion and expressiveness of the music.

Experiência azul [Blue Experience], 2022. Clitoria ternatea flower petal on cotton paper. 30 × 56 cm.

Dos Santos experiments with the manifestation of aqueous language by blowing granules of roasted and ground flowers onto a moist plane (paper or canvas), which absorbs them. Although they retain the gesture of the artist, this blue topography is also formed by the agency of the pulverized flower itself and the winds that distribute them across the canvas, adding multiple actions to the artistic results. In this way, the flower not only plays a colorful role in the service of the artist’s plastic desires but also has a pictorial autonomy. Dos Santos doesn’t extract a pigment from the flower, but rather processes the entire flower into a powder, making the work more of a botanical impression that questions categorical definitions than a painting.

For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, complex planes in shades of blue surround the viewer, creating an enveloping atmosphere. This experience resembles the artist’s synesthetic vision of blue during meditation. In this work, she collaborates with her mother, Eliana de Oliveira, who for years has developed complex patchwork designs in the construction of textile patterns. The union of different fabrics follows her mother’s interest in applied mathematics, guiding rhythms and compositions close to Euclidean logics that contrast with the botanical geometries proposed by Dos Santos. This dialogue emphasizes flows of knowledge transmission, hierarchical revisions, and transdisciplinary practices.

Mateus Nunes

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

Como terminar uma tese: o tempo da cor [How to End a Thesis: The Time of Color], 2024. Clitoria ternatea flower petals on cotton canvas. View of the solo exhibition at GDA – Galeria de Artista, curated by Khadyg Fares. 500 × 400 × 300 cm. Photo: Ana Pigosso.

Sadikou Oukpedjo

Sadikou Oukpedjo’s works seem to manage time on their own. Their autonomy is manifested in the singular treatment given to figures, especially in the primordial gestures and expressions, worthy of an archaeological will, interested more in the behavior of forms than in anatomical accuracy. At the same time, it’s not uncommon to see contemporary symbols in his work capable of translating geopolitical conflicts linked to the power of imperialist countries. A machine gun and a US flag suggest a critical contextualization of the present. This complex intersection between past and present elevates his production to a state of chronological suspension, confronting and challenging any notions of temporality. However, there is another aspect of his production that is committed to revising earthly rules: the magical force that the artist represents and interprets. It was after his participation in the Biennale de Dakar in 2014 that he began his series of works featuring drawings of therianthropic figures, hybrids of animal and human, common in the imaginary that has been created about cave paintings.

Sept milliards de témoins [Seven Billion Witnesses], 2024. Mixed media on canvas. 259 × 347 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Cecile Fakhoury, Abidjan.

Sadikou schematizes these colossal bodies in deep transmutation, in the manner of entities. Far removed from the category of human, they are drawn as superior forces in a constant duel with each other. Although their silhouettes and countenances are represented introspectively, they often simulate direct confrontation, if not fused in combat as if they were already immobilized. Their references evoke myths and fantastic beings from different cultures performing mundane actions in a pantheon illustrated by ethereal colors and situations involving animalistic beings that border on the fable-like.

Likewise, his practice with wooden sculptures, which began even earlier, at the end of the 1990s, operates in the dichotomy of ancestral and contemporary time. And it suggests, once again, bodies-entities that are always comfortable with their physical state, even under the aggrandizement of forms. Unlike the two-dimensional works, however, the hybrid of animal and human appears more timidly.

By decentralizing his studies from the perspective of human knowledge, he finds other possibilities for reading reality in the spiritual world. He chooses to access the sensible through other cosmogonies at the service of interpreting the human psyche, but also the political relationships inherent to humanity.

Wes Chagas

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

Nouvelle mythologie #3 [New Mythology #3], 2019. Mixed media on canvas. 284 × 353 cm. Photo: Issam Zeljy. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Cecile Fakhoury, Abidjan.

Olivier Marboeuf

Olivier Marboeuf is an artist, storyteller, independent curator, cultural theorist, and film producer. In the 1990s, together with the artist and writer Yvan Alagbé, he founded Amok, a comic book publishing house. Between 2004 and 2018, he was the artistic director of Espace Khiasma, a space dedicated to promoting the visual arts and literature. Having worked in multiple creative fields, he also dedicates his time to audiovisual work, producing films and documentaries.

In his artistic practices, Marboeuf explores themes such as imperialism, servitude, and the consequences of racial oppression, which feed into his work, characterized by being a space for reflection and social and political debate, anchored in post-colonial theories, indispensable tools for putting emancipatory strategies into practice. It is an approach that seeks not only to revisit the past but also to open up new ways of narrating and representing history. La Ronde des vies bonnes [The Round of Good Lives] (2025), a site-specific installation for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, is an ephemeral fresco in which water and liquidity become more than metaphors for the diasporic Black and Indigenous cultures of the Americas. Bodily fluids, dams, aquatic entities, and urban water networks, oceans and seas, deltas, sandbanks, mobile continents of

Peyi en retour [Returning Country], 2024-2025. Detail of production at Centre Pompidou Metz. Chalk on ultramarine blue wall, sound installation.

pollution and sargassum – all these are sites of memory, struggle, and living archives of chaotic metamorphoses. They are animated spaces where transplanted bodies-landscapes intertwine.

It is this process of becoming human, beyond catastrophe, at once monstrous, interdependent, and collective, that gives life to the installation. A constellation of possible – and good – paths populates the work, in which blue acquires a new meaning, the color of a history that exceeds Blackness and disappearance, that transcends the boundaries between the living and the dead. It evokes the color of precedents, resistant, recurrent, reoccurring, in the form of visual and auditory hallucinations, the word “blue” present at the beginning of blueprints, the term for designs, maps, and precedents.

Ana Paula Lopes

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program

Peyi en retour [Returning Country], 2024-2025. Details of production at Centre Pompidou Metz. Chalk on ultramarine blue wall, sound installation.

Camille Turner

Afrofuturism, critical fabulation, and historical research intertwine within Camille Turner’s work to destabilize colonial narratives and construct new possibilities for existence. In DreamSpace (2025), that she premiers at the 36th Bienal, the artist proposes an immersive sound installation that takes the audience into a meditative and fabulatory state. The work is anchored in the Afronautic methodology developed by Turner, which proposes walking, feeling, imagining, and responding to the traces of history. The work activates a space where ancestral memory is not only evoked but also experienced as a pulsation and flow through bodies and times.

Meditation is not limited to introspection, but suggests a perceptual shift: a channel that expands presence and transforms relationships with time and space. The act of dreaming, understood here as matter, alters what seemed stable and modifies the very breathing of the world. The installation operates like a portal, guiding participants through an experience in which the boundaries between past, present, and future are continually resized. It says to

Pods for Dreaming, 2024. Multi-channel sound, video, ambient lighting, various materials. Created with the support of the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and AbTec Gallery (Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace). Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.

us: “Remember the future.” The guiding voice and a sound take the listener on a journey that is no less abstract than the creation of Blackness. Fabulation here is not just narrative, but vibration and displacement. Listening becomes a flexible affair, a force field where memories are created, the body is reorganized, and time folds into itself.

DreamSpace invites us to an inverted movement: it is from the present that a transmission is emitted. In this work, we inhabit a world in which oppression has been overcome and the dream of liberation has become real – a world shaped by dreamers who are themselves projections of dreams. Thus, we are called to transmit this collective dream to those still struggling in the past and to communicate to the dreamers of the future that liberation is not only possible, but imminent. Dreaming is the way.

Far from being an escape, refuge manifests itself as a technology of permanence, a way of preserving and prolonging existences that would otherwise be erased. In DreamSpace, the sound composition not only conducts but reshapes the relationship with the present, creating cracks through which the impossible can insinuate itself. Like a call that reverberates beyond time, the work reminds us that our imagination is not just an engine for transforming reality, but a field where futures are shaped, inscribed, and continually cultivated.

Ariana Nuala

Translated from Portuguese by Philip

Somervell

Simnikiwe Buhlungu

long time lung time continuuuum!!! (A conversomething), 2024. Conver-something (featuring Juno-6, Pamela Z, Valie Export, Ventilated Pipe Progenies), steel tubes, ventilation machines, film screenings, sound piece, space for gathering and sounding. Installation view at Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf, curated by the Inter Media Arts Institute. Photo: Ivo Farber.

Simnikiwe Buhlungu is an artist from Johannesburg who is currently living and working in Amsterdam. Interested in knowledge production(s) – how it is produced, by whom, and how it is disseminated – Buhlungu locates socio-historical and everyday phenomena by navigating these questions and their inexhaustible potential answers. Through a research-based practice, she works through sound, text, installation, and publishing to map points of cognisance which situate various layers of awareness as reverberated ecologies.

In recent projects, she has delved into thinking about how to know if something that is not visible is present with us. This reflection comes from an exploration in (im)material research, developed alongside a microbiologist and chemist, to understand the ways in which scientific apparati can become methodologies for sensing that which is not ocular but exists in time, across geo-historical narratives and genealogies. Buhlungu was a resident at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, from 2020-2022 and graduated with a BA (Fine Arts) at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2017.

For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, she presents Ventilated Pipe Progenies in Another Elsewhere (2025), a site-specifically adapted work from her 2024 project long time lung time continuuum!!! (a conver-something) at Kunst im Tunnel (KIT), Düsseldorf. This iteration reveals a kinship unit of ventilation pipes, extending from the ceiling

of the Pavilion and descending beneath it, connecting to the building’s circulatory mechanisms of ventilation that enable for various forms of gathering, sensing, and listening to take place within its architecture. Further, these metal pipes point to the consciousness and functioning of a physical structure and their ability to speak, question, propose or exist within slippages. Here, the pipes not only inhale and exhale air as structural lungwork but spatially redirect air in loops of whistling, huffing, puffing, and tonal gestures of sound. Each pipe is in conversation with their sibling, simultaneously exchanging air circulated by visitors; in totality, syncopated in breath.

Acknowledgements: Salmo Albatal, Stephan Kuderna (Metal Workshop, Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten), Stefano Rattini (Organista Trentino), Leonardo Ciarleglio, Barbara Cappello, and Maurizio Zelada.

Text provided by the artist

hygrosummons (iter.01), 2024. Bamboo, calabash, raffia, robotics, plastic buckets, PVC tubing. Installation view at Chisenhale Gallery, London. Produced by Chisenhale Gallery; commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, and Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam. Photo: Andy Keate. This participation is supported by: Mondriaan Fund

And The Other Thing I Was Saying Was (A Conver-something), 2022. Sound installation with theremins and speakers. Commissioned by the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, for the main exhibition The Milk of Dreams. Photo: Roberto Marossi.

Julianknxx

Julianknxx’s work is not fixed – it moves. His work traverses geographies, languages, and gestures, building an archive in transit where each voice resonates as part of a large choir. To think of his work is to think directly of the cultural roots of West Africa, especially Sierra Leone, where the artist comes from. In his films, installations, and performances, the artist does not seek out a single testimony, but a fabric of memories and presences that escapes colonial narratives. His gaze does not collect, but listens. The notion of displacement is constantly present. The sea, harbor cities, bodies waiting or in transit – they all run through his work like traces of a past that has never stopped moving. The ocean is not just a setting, but a character: a liquid archive that holds traumas and possibilities, that erases traces and, at the same time, transports them. Europe, in his philosophy, is not a fixed space, but an unstable landscape where Black bodies reinvent what it means to belong.

Julianknxx is as interested in the history of the world as he is in the everyday history of the people who comprise it, an interest that forms the backdrop to his narrative. The choir, the spoken word, the performance that becomes matter – the artist understands music as resistance, but also as a trace of something greater: the sound of those who have never stopped moving. His work is part of the oral tradition of a living Africa and leads us to the following question: What does it mean to belong to a place when places are always intersected by other stories?

Shifting Spirit Time, 2025. Video stills. Shown at Buro Stedelijk, Amsterdam. Courtesy of the artist and Studioknxx. © Studioknxx.

On Freedom of Movement (wi de muv), 2022. Video still. Courtesy of the artist and Studioknxx. © Studioknxx.

Writing poems is a fundamental part of his creative process, a tool that not only underpins his work, but the way he articulates his experiences and observes the realities of the world, transforming fragments of memory into new forms of resistance. His practice challenges the hierarchies of the Western archive, transforming listening through a radical method and fragmentation in terms of form. What matters is not only what is said, but also the silence that warns: tiredness can also be resistance.

Julianknxx proposes radical listening. In his work, the past and the present brush up against each other, and history is not revealed as a static account, but as something that pulses, that is remade at every turn. At the crossroads of art and politics, his images and sounds remind us that our stories were never just the colonial narratives we were told – they are also what we keep singing, even when no one seems to be listening.

Nathalia Grilo

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

ɔl bɔdi na sta, 2024. Video still. Courtesy of the artist and Studioknxx. © Studioknxx.

Hamedine Kane

Designed in the shape of a pontoon, Les Ressources: Acte-#2 [The Resources: Act-#2] (2025) is a monumental sculpture-like installation by the artist Hamedine Kane and his collaborator Boris Raux (from the School of Mutants), developed from research conducted in São Paulo and Salvador. The sculpture acts as a vessel carrying found objects such as wooden fragments, ropes, and jerrycans, all reminiscent of the boats that sail offshore, and by extension, fishing activities. Collected from several areas across the Brazilian coastline, these materials compose the core of large paintings and form an assemblage presented alongside accounts gathered within the fishing communities through fieldwork.

ressources [The

Trois Américains à Paris [Three Americans in Paris], 2024. Installation view in the solo exhibition Salesman of Revolt, Auto Italia, London, 2024. Photo: Studio Daniel Browne. Courtesy of the artist and Selebe Yoon, Dakar.

Les

Resources], 2024. Installation view at Selebe Yoon, Dakar. Photo: Morel Donou. Courtesy of the artist and Selebe Yoon, Dakar.

Les Ressources: Acte-#2 is a continuation of a similar work previously presented in Dakar, Senegal, and inscribes itself within the artist’s ongoing investigation of the abusive extraction of resources, particularly marine species across the coastal lines of Senegal and Brazil. Through meticulous note-taking and image-making of these processes, Kane presents compelling material addressing the gradual disruption of biodiversity in these regions. According to surveys conducted by several environmentalist journalists, predatory fishing has consequently decimated Brazil’s coastal fish population, leading to the quasi-extinction of certain species. Enabled by weak regulations, overfishing and illegal extraction of marine species by multinational companies exploiting Brazil’s coasts have depleted ecosystems and harmed the living standards of local communities, forcing the displacement of small fishers who rely on the ocean. These actions have also significantly impacted food security and environmental balance. Additionally, the installation highlights the disproportionate competition established against local and artisan fishing communities, who are the direct victims of such abusive and extractive resource exploitation.

Presented in São Paulo within the framework of the Bienal, Les Ressources: Acte-#2 is of utmost relevance to the context as it provides a cross-conversational platform that sheds light on the shared struggles of the fishing communities in Senegal and Brazil, but also on the existing geographical and epistemological resonances carried across both sides of the Atlantic between the coast of West Africa and South America.

Billy Fowo

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program, Villa Medici, and Instituto Sacatar

Home to Home, 2024.

Photo: Tom Carter. Courtesy of the artist and Selebe Yoon, Dakar.

Sérgio Soarez

Through sculptures and drawings, Sérgio Soarez embarks on a careful investigation of the ontological complexity of the Yoruba people and African diasporic religions in Bahia. Linguistic systems from West Africa, particularly from the Gulf of Guinea, are fused with the exuberance of the Afro-Baroque style of Bahia, produced during the colonial period. This encompasses everything – from ornamental scrolls and spirals to the intense iconography of the African diaspora, often incorporated into cultural exchanges that do not deny the violence inherent in those exchanges. Objects collected and recontextualized, many found in junkyards, antique fairs, or on the streets, are the focus of his interest. Through assemblage, the artist makes iron objects – keys, knives, drills, pliers, rusted tools or weapons – and wooden objects – plinths, rocaille, simple planks, or ornaments – coexist. These elements align various lives, times, and uses, with their traces marked on their bodies. Thus, Soarez invites us to view these pairings as the congregation of encounters analogous to the miscegenation and syncretism resulting from the African diaspora.

Ìyámi (detail), 2019. Wood, cowrie shells, palm nuts, antique scale, porcelain, paint. 143 × 69 × 26 cm. Photo: Giovane Sobrevivente.

Mão nas cadeiras [Hands on Hips], 2011. Wood, stainless steel. 75 × 17 × 26 cm. Photo: Giovane Sobrevivente.

Oxaguian, 2011. Wood, beads, iron, and musical instrument bell. 134 × 20,5 × 23 cm. Photo: Giovane Sobrevivente.

The connection between geometric language and Afro-Brazilian religious repertoires acknowledges oracles, orishas, divination systems – such as merindinlogun – and spiritual weapons. By referencing the ofá, a sacred weapon composed of a bow and arrow used by Oshossi – also used by other orishas and Jeje Mahi vodúns as a hunting weapon in the forest – the artist alludes to the values imbued in these instruments, such as precision, focus, wisdom, and strategy.

Soarez’s work facilitates dialogues with key figures and successors of Brazilian Afrofuturism. The totemic and symbolic representation of orishas through sacred geometry resonates with the legacies of Rubem Valentim, Mestre Didi, and José Adário dos Santos – each contributing unique aspects, such as the use of bead necklaces and the prominence of iron materiality in the work of the latter two. Similarities are also evident with the sculptures of Emanoel Araujo, particularly in Soarez’s monochromatic reliefs made of lacquered wood with vibrant colors.

Mateus Nunes

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Leonel Vásquez

Colombian artist Leonel Vásquez investigates sound as a vibrational force and a medium of sensory transformation. In his recent research, Vásquez has focused on relational listening practices aimed at life niches and more-than-human sonic agencies – such as water, trees, stones, and other living and vibrant materials – guiding himself by the study of cosmoresonances as a contribution to systemic intelligence and planetary well-being.

Sound, our first connection to the world – present even before we open our eyes to the light of life – manifests as vibration in motion, awakening other states of attention. Understanding listening as the foundation of relationships and agreements between living beings is the essence of Templo da água: rio Tietê [Temple of Water: Tietê River] (2025).

The first Templo da água created by Vásquez was made in collaboration with the Bogotá River in Colombia, exploring listening as a way to reconnect with natural flows. When transported to the context of São Paulo and the Tietê River, this reflection gains new layers of meaning. Historically, the Tietê played a fundamental role in the formation of the city, shaping the ways of life of its first inhabitants. However, with the advancement of urbanization, São Paulo progressively broke its ties with the rivers, opting to canalize, pollute, and distance them from the landscape and daily life. Still, traces of this presence persist: the very Ibirapuera

Water Temple: Bogotá River, 2023.

Installation view at NC Arte, Bogotá. Photo: Andrés Brand. Courtesy of the artist and Casa Hoffmann, Bogotá.

Water Temple: Tyne River, 2023. Installation view in the exhibition Stepping Softly on the Earth, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. Courtesy of the artist and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.

Park, where the Bienal Pavilion is located, is crossed by the Sapateiro Stream – a small watercourse that originates in the park and connects to the Tietê – reminding us of the invisible web of waters that continues to sustain the city. The installation is designed as an intimate and meditative space. Its circular format favors collective resonance – not just as a sensory experience, but as a gesture of reconnection with the river, with others, and with oneself. Long copper flutes connected to glass bulbs are suspended and animated by a mechanical system that causes the assembly to be immersed in a basin of water. The filling and emptying of the bulb create an air pressure dynamic that, in turn, activates sound in the tube, somewhat reminiscent of the hydraulic technology of whistling vessels developed by various populations in the Andean region, such as the Quimbaya people from the Cauca Valley in present-day Colombia.

The crystalline waters from the upper Tietê River, collected for the work, are permanently oxygenated and traversed by the frequencies emitted by the flutes, creating a soundscape that evokes the cyclical flow of life. Around it, thought benches invite visitors to immerse themselves in the resonance of the river, transforming the act of listening into a gesture of both personal and environmental healing. At the conclusion of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, this very water will be returned to the Tietê.

Leonardo Matsuhei

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

This participation is supported by: Embassy of Colombia in Brazil and Casa Hoffmann

Helena Uambembe

In Long Long Long Ago (2025), Helena Uambembe imagines the catastrophic disruption of a long-forgotten time of equilibrium, harmony, and the occult. This is the split of two parallel entities, two equals and opposites – nemeses – in this instance twin giant brothers locked in constant battle despite their similarities. Their violent rivalry, which splits the earth, overshadows those who suffer the most from this fracture – the small creatures who live amongst them, their toil almost invisible. Their warnings of the trouble caused by the giants go unheard and ignored.

Commissioned for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Uambembe’s work returns to the familiar medium of video, where shadow and light interplay with the artist’s own transfixing narration. The work is introduced through a newer dimension of her practice: a painted mural at the entrance to the film booth. This medium has become an evolving part of Uambembe’s visual language, marked by portrayals of spectral presences and sites of polarity, expressed through a skilful combination of muted and acidic colors, and the integration of repetition and archival re-rendering.

Beyond the concept of continental drift, Long Long Long Ago retells the dramatic split between two mirrored landscapes: Pão de Açúcar in Rio de Janeiro and Morro do Moco in Huambo, Angola – the country where Uambembe’s parents were born and from which they fled during civil war, not to safety, but to a new traumatic reality. Her father was among the Angolan men in

Toil, 2021. Video stills.

Namibian refugee camps conscripted into South Africa’s apartheid-era 32 Battalion; her mother was one of the women forced to marry and start a family within weeks. After the Cold War, the battalion was transferred to Pomfret, South Africa, where residents were later made to mine asbestos and left in a decaying town marked by political shame and collapse. That community –Portuguese-speaking, isolated, and stigmatized – has shaped Uambembe’s practice through a complex inheritance of forced migration and generational trauma. Uambembe’s narration, embedded within moving image and introduced by a mural that acts as a threshold, retells Greek mythology and African folklore. But this is not only mythmaking – the evocation of a long-forgotten equilibrium speaks to an ongoing condition: cycles of trauma rooted in a conflict between forces bound by a dangerous sameness. The ruins of their struggle are inherited and relived – while those who suffer most remain the least seen, heard, or acknowledged.

Lara Koseff

This participation is supported by: Casa Líquida, FAS – Forward Art Stories, and Legacy

Blooming in Stasis 25.8230° S, 23.5312° E, 2023. Installation view. Photo: Wolfgang Stah.

Ernest Cole

Numerous media reports have recounted instances where cell phones, umbrellas, and drills were mistaken for firearms – tragic situations in which innocent victims, predominantly men of color, were assassinated by the police. These deaths are part of a larger, invisible yet racialized pact, a societal division that marches on collectively, as though nothing has happened. For photographer Ernest Cole (1940-1990), this scenario is tragically familiar: a camera in hand was often enough to place his life at risk, and should he be “misidentified,” his humanity would be sacrificed by a system where a white minority had, for over four decades, institutionalized a regime of social and political segregation.

Documenting the violence of apartheid in South Africa during the 1950s and 1960s, Cole’s work serves as a reminder of how closely intertwined military and photographic technologies are. In both actions – shooting a person and taking a photograph – one can see the similarities in the engineering of impact, whether triggering an explosive or activating a camera’s shutter. It was this system of political and visual segregation that forced Cole into exile in the United States in 1966, carrying with him his photographic negatives. Permanently banned from his homeland, Cole

Heirs of Poverty: “Penny, boss, please, boss, I hungry….”, 1960s. Blackand-white photograph. © Ernest Cole Family Trust.

settled in New York, where he organized his writings and photographic accounts in the first person. These accounts were divided into fourteen chapters, such as “The Mines,” “Nightmare Rides,” “For Whites Only,” “Education for Servitude,” “Heirs of Poverty,” “The Consolation of Religion,” and “African Middle Class.” It was there that he published one of the first works to expose the injustices of apartheid to the world: House of Bondage (1967). Originally created as a photobook, House of Bondage spread to diverse audiences through the tactile experience of turning its pages and the attentive gaze upon the images contained within. Readers could follow the book’s narrative structure or skip to specific chapters, such as the ones already mentioned. However, as Cole’s photography began circulating in exhibitions, his photographic testimony reached a new audience. Instead of touching the book, now the viewer’s body must move closer to the photographs hanging on the wall, transferring the sensitivity from the hands to the eyes, keenly attuned to the exhibition space. Also, the linear narrative of chapters is replaced by a carefully curated selection and organization of key moments captured by the photographer.

André Pitol

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

For Whites Only: The infectious spread of apartheid into the smallest detail of daily living has made South Africa a land of signs, 1960s. Black-and-white photograph. © Ernest Cole Family Trust.

Metta Pracrutti

Mayuri Chari (Metta Pracrutti).

Azulejo [Tiling], 2019. Embroidery on Manchester cloth. 182 × 91 cm.

Metta Pracrutti is an informal group of artists that came together on the occasion of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo to collectively develop a project that reflects on the sociocultural and political dynamics shaping the experiences of marginalized communities.

Although the Indian Constitution officially abolished the caste system and untouchability in 1950, caste remains a significant force in Indian society. Despite this legal framework, social practices and cultural norms continue to perpetuate caste-based discrimination, influencing social interactions, marriage practices, and access to resources. This exclusion extends beyond the social sphere and includes collective punishments, such as restricted access to water and the systematic imposition of labor considered degrading. Oppression is enforced without justification, becoming a crime without guilt. True freedom, therefore, cannot be achieved without dismantling the religious foundations that uphold the caste system. Legal freedom can only become meaningful when accompanied by social and cultural liberation, enabling Dalits to live without discrimination.

The project’s title, Monsoon (2025), refers to the seasonal winds that alternate between rainy and dry periods in tropical and subtropical regions. It serves as a powerful metaphor for the intense yet interconnected shifts that affect these realities. The group challenges the sociopolitical structures of segregation in India while embracing diverse artistic forms to promote a holistic view of the lived experiences of various communities.

Through works by distinct artists, Monsoon explores themes such as identity, resistance, and power relations.

The variety of media – including videos, woodcuts, embroidery, installations, and paintings – reflects both the individuality of each artist and the unity of a collective movement advocating for social justice and human rights. Each piece carries a history of resistance against exclusion and is situated within a broader context of questioning social and cultural norms. The metaphor of the monsoon, evoking the alternation between intensity and calm, also mirrors the experience of these communities, who, though subjected to cycles of oppression, continue to demonstrate unwavering resilience.

The group is composed of: Abin Sreedharan K P, Bhushan Dilip Bhombale, Kumari Ranjeeta, Malvika Raj, Mayuri Madhu Chari, Mohammed Mukhtar Abdul Rauf Kazi, Parag Kashinath Tandel, Prabhakar Kamble, Rajyashri Rose Goody, Ruivah Shimray Zamthingla, Sagar Kamble, Somnath Baburao Waghamare, Sreeju Radhakrishnan, Sumesh Sharma, Tejswini Narayan Sonawane, and Vikrant Vishwas Bhise.

Mateus Nunes

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Prabhakar Kamble (Metta Pracrutti). Utarand, 2025. Terracotta pot, nylon rope, iron, ceramic, indigo. 167 × 20 × 20 cm.

Sagar Kamble (Metta Pracrutti). Rain I, 2020. Mixed media on canvas. 122 × 122 cm.

Kenzi Shiokava

Kenzi Shiokava (1938-2021) – a name that, in its very spelling, bears the traces of a history of diaspora and cultural confluence. The unusual transliteration of the Japanese sound into the Latin alphabet – recurrent among members of the first waves of Japanese migration – gives his signature a uniquely Brazilian accent. Added to this transcontinental connection is the United States, the country where the São Paulo artist, a descendant of immigrants from the Kagoshima Prefecture, chose to live and develop his professional and artistic career from 1964 until his death.

In Los Angeles, Kenzi Shiokava settled and trained academically at the Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts) and the Otis Art Institute. In this context, he worked with artists such as John Outterbridge and Noah Purifoy, with whom he shared not only an interest in the language of assemblage, already an expressive trend in the local art scene, but also a sensibility about non-white racialized identities and a broader reflection on modes of creation shaped by intercultural experiences. As a reflection of this multifaceted experience, we take as an example the totemic forms that the artist produced for much of his career. Carved mostly from logs or wooden poles and occasionally combined with straw, dried leaves, shells, and macramé threads, these pieces seem to evoke spirits from ancient times. Following aesthetic principles linked to the Zen Buddhist thought of Daisetsu Suzuki, Shiokava’s sculptures place themselves in space without appealing to grandiloquence or ornamentation. His works reveal a silent practice, fueled by decades of professional experience in gardening, which brought him closer to ikebana – a Japanese floral art that values minimal gesture

n.d.

Untitled,

Botanical item, wood. Courtesy of the Estate of Kenzi Shiokava and Nonaka-Hill Gallery.

and the revelation of natural beauty. Each cut, pigmentation, or combination of elements is carried out with economy and precision, deeply respecting the marks of the passage of time imprinted on the surface of the material and underlining its history and inherent strength.

In addition to the Zen influence, Shiokava incorporates animist visions from different spiritual traditions. The Kachina culture of the Hopi people, which recognizes a vital force present in all elements of nature, dialogues directly with Japanese Shintoism, in which the kami inhabit rivers, rocks, and trees. The spiritual dimension is the main thread running through the artist’s work. By bringing these matrices together in a non-hierarchical synthesis,

places his production in a zone of symbolic coexistence between multiple cosmologies.

This participation is supported by: National Center for Art Research, Japan

Leonardo Matsuhei

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

Shiokava

Untitled (Shaman series), 2005. Beads, wood, and macrame. 203,2 × 45,7 × 45,7 cm. Courtesy of the Estate of Kenzi Shiokava and Nonaka-Hill Gallery.

LA Kachina, 2003. Douglas-fir molding wood boxes, paint. 198,1 × 40,6 × 30,5 cm. Courtesy of the Estate of Kenzi Shiokava and Nonaka-Hill Gallery.

Leila Alaoui

Leila Alaoui (1982-2016) was born in Paris to a French mother and a Moroccan father. She grew up in Marrakech, Morocco, and moved to the United States at the age of eighteen to study at Hofstra University in Long Island, New York, obtaining a degree in Social Sciences. She later continued her studies at the City University of New York and, alongside her academic training, worked as an assistant to photographers and filmmakers on various projects, such as Shirin Neshat’s Women Without Men (2009) and Spike Lee’s Inside Man (2006). In one of her most famous series, Les Marocains [The Moroccans] (2010-2014), the artist travels around Morocco with a portable photographic studio, setting it up in the streets of urban and rural areas, inviting passers-by to have their portraits taken on the spot. In the images, their profiles stand out against a black background. Detached from their context, but secretly rooted in it, their traditional clothes become an invitation to an encounter. Nothing in their expressions denotes sadness or anger. On the contrary, they inspire courage and affection in the viewer who, although they have the power to look at or turn away from the Moroccan who can’t see them, feels exposed to the unknown.

No Pasara [They Shall Not Pass], 2008. Lambda print on aluminum. 102 × 73 cm. Courtesy of Centre Interculturel Leila Alaoui – CILA and Galleria Continua.

No Pasara [They Shall Not Pass], 2008.

on aluminum. 73 × 102 cm.

A few years earlier, in the series No Pasara [They Shall Not Pass] (2008), the artist recorded young people who dreamed of crossing the small stretch of Atlantic that separates North Africa from Europe. These images capture a desire at odds with reality: children and teenagers living in suspension, aspiring to a horizon that is forbidden to them, but which holds the promise of a possible future. The invisible border between the countries constantly insinuates itself into the landscapes – in the coastal gorge, in partially collapsed walls, in mountains of garbage that seem easily passable –in opposition to their still hesitant figures.

Throughout Leila Alaoui’s work, there is a deep respect for the people she photographs. Through their cultural particularities, the artist distinguished and communicated their individualities, to the point of provoking in the public the sensation of an unsettling closeness, which puts into perspective both the idea that some have rights that are denied to others and the very notion of borders. For Alaoui, it was inconceivable that so many people would risk their lives or sacrifice their identities in crossings that she herself could make safely, protected by the privilege of her French passport.

Hired in 2016 by Amnesty International to develop a project on women’s rights in Burkina Faso, Leila Alaoui was the victim of a terrorist attack days after she arrived in the capital, Ouagadougou, and died at the age of 33.

Luiza Marcolino

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program

Lambda print

Courtesy of Centre Interculturel Leila Alaoui – CILA and Galleria Continua.

Shuvinai Ashoona

2008–2009.

56 × 76 cm.

Populated by traditions and stories of mythical beings, Inuit society is marked by a linguistic diversity that deepens its relationship with nature. This rich culture, characteristic of one of the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic, forms the foundation of the delicate and expressive drawings of artist Shuvinai Ashoona.

Shuvinai Ashoona, who comes from a family of artists, was born in Kinngait (a settlement known until 2020 as Cape Dorset), in the Nunavut territory, Canada. Ashoona transforms her drawings into a magical realm, where cosmologies and social representations of Inuit life intertwine, while also reflecting the drastic climate changes affecting our planet. Active since the 1990s, the artist develops her work at the Kinngait Studios, a community art cooperative, using paper, graphite, and colored pencils as her main mediums of expression. With sharp contours and delicate lines, Ashoona’s drawings unfold in a time that escapes the logic of the contemporary. Her works are imbued with memory, narratives, and shamanic cosmologies tied to Arctic tradition. In soft tones and serene lines, her drawings are constructed in layers, depicting Arctic deserts and coves inhabited by

Untitled,

Color pencil and ink on paper.

Untitled, 2008–2009. Color pencil and ink on paper. 56 × 76 cm.

magical beings and Inuit people. The lines, accompanied by delicate pictorial hatchings, evoke narratives that span across intertwined temporalities, inhabiting the ambiguity between past and future. Her compositions reveal spiritual forces and multiple social narratives, perceptible especially in the diversity of human representations. The paper thus becomes a territory populated by fantastical beings and ecological concerns, deepening and reaffirming the artist’s cultural roots.

Ana Paula Lopes

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

This participation is supported by: Canada Council for the Arts

Untitled, 2021. Graphite, colored pencil and ink on paper. 128 × 249,5 cm.

Myriam Omar Awadi

Guided by the poetic corpus “Les feux que vos derniers souffles ravivent” [Fires that your last breath rekindle], Myriam Omar Awadi’s The Smell of Earth After Fire and the Promise of Breaths: For the Obsession With Resonance Spreading Tenderly Our Skin/ Our Bodies O/ From the Incandescent Warmth of the Ashes invokes a cartography of breaths, cloths, and ancestral presence. At its center are multiple shiromani: traditional Comorian fabrics sourced in Koko’s [grandmother] spirits. These clothes form a visual and sonic terrain that flickers between concealment and revelation. Suspended within an arrangement of microphones and speakers shaped like trees – evoking the tangled roots of mangroves – fabric hangs from the swaying branches of these invisible forms. The sculptural and sonic installation evokes the epiphany of a mangrove forest, with all sculptures crafted from wood. Drawing from the Debe, a Comorian ritual tradition led by women, Omar Awadi summons embroidery not only as adornment but as a form of score – a way of holding what cannot be said. Each shiromani becomes both a ritual object and a cultural archive, carrying memory through its folds, textures, and repetitions. They retain not only personal resonance but the gravity of collective belonging.

Conceived across Comoros, Mumbai, and São Paulo, La Réunion (2025) unfolds through networks of care, stretched across continents but anchored in collaboration. The embroideries are produced in Mumbai in partnership with artisans who render each cloth with careful attention. In São Paulo, sculptural wooden bases are fabricated to serve as both anchors and acoustic architecture. Each element enters into dialogue with these artisans’ deep labors, light and sound, shaped during rehearsals with performers – each paired with a single shiromani. These performers are guided by presence, not spectacle. Their movement is minimal, attuned to texture, weight, and breath. Scores are written not for the stage, but for relation – rehearsed in repetition, light, and listening. The performance becomes a shared act of orientation and return, in which meaning accumulates slowly through contact and proximity.

Shiromani, corps protostellaire

Protostellar

Performative installation,

In this work, the shiromani function as active collaborators. Embroidered and suspended, each cloth becomes both a witness and a score. Their shimmering surfaces catch and reflect light, evoking life and the invisible: eyes watching, memories vibrating, and the interwoven energy of those present and those beyond. Movement is guided by attunement rather than choreography, allowing each performer to build a relationship with their assigned cloth’s spirit. Through this process, ritual and performance are brought into alignment. The shiromani carry the work’s memories, so our bodies O, its voices, its forms and its own knowledges.

Cameron Ah Loo-Matamua

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program

[Shiromani,

Body], 2012.

embroidery on fabric. Variable dimensions; 20’. Photo: Antonio Prianon / RMR / Madoi. Courtesy of Frac Réunion.

Chapter 5 Cadences of Transformations

Change is a constant in human existence and indeed all existences. The laws of physics state that everything is in motion mechanically and quantically. So we are constantly faced with transformations of varying kinds that directly or tangentially impact our beings and relations with the world. Yet, we are constantly faced with dogmatic resistances toward change in the name of tradition – although, etymologically, there is a proximity between tradition, translation (tradire), and betrayal (trahir).

This chapter brings together works that deal with technological, material and immaterial transformations, sociopolitical and ecological transformations, cultural and psychological transformations, chemical and quantum-related transformations, and how humans effect these changes and are, consciously or unconsciously, affected by them. These are the transformations that Zim Ngqawana intones in the eponymous song “Transformation” of his Zimology album, as he takes the listener in a sonic-corporeal experience across varying cadences of transformations. Artists from five continents share with us real and metaphorical transformations related to the complexities of their histories and geographies.

Antonio Társis

Installation view of Storm in a Teacup, Carlos/Ishikawa, London (September –October, 2024). Photo: Damian Griffiths. Courtesy

Antonio Társis is a Brazilian multidisciplinary artist whose installations generate porous resonance in sound, structure, and the material impact of humanity’s ecological imprint. By layering tangible and sonic elements, Társis generates a visceral tonality through the collage of visual, spatial, and material memory. From the friction of heating water and the pressurized hisses of evaporating steam to the echo of charcoal collapsing against atabaques – a handmade drum from the artist’s community of Cabula, Salvador – his installations evoke landscapes of disarray, revealing human extraction, consumption, and destruction. A self-taught artist known for his utilization of recycled matchboxes, Társis draws on found materials in both his collaged and suspended assemblages. Present in his earliest works and informed by his experience of growing up in a favela in Northern Brazil, matchboxes and electronic waste indicate histories of labor and the gravity of the human experience. A full matchbox becomes an instrument, in which shaking matchsticks add to the rhythmic layers of a generated soundscape. Additional materials such as metal, paper, cement, and fire meet to induce a raw chorus, unrefined and experimental in its composition. Referred to by the artist as a “collective chaos,” these sound activations emerge from points of destruction at shifting stages of inception, climax, and ultimately catastrophe. Still, at its core, the persistence of life reverberates in an ever-quiet symphony, as small imperceptible notes indicate continuity in the face of colonial and political ostracization.

of the artist; Carlos/Ishikawa, London; and Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo.

Based in London, Társis reconsiders the implications of international labor practices – drawing connections between communities in the Global South and North –and most notably the legacy of mineral mining. In his 2024 exhibition at Carlos/Ishikawa, Storm in a Teacup, Társis’s installation pointed to the impending combustion of an empire that consumes itself. Intricate and ambiguous, sheathes of assembled matchboxes in alternating hues of red and blue floated alongside an installed flag, nationless and featuring a constellation of electronic parts.

In a continuation of the disruption of nationalistic hierarchy, Társis confronts us with a borderless wasteland, where remnants of human greed and socioeconomic corruption are evidenced one discarded item at a time. Through this sinuous act of environment building, here not only the invisible is unearthed, but the sonic repercussions of our collective impact are made real.

Starasea Nidiala Camara

Detail of Untitled, 2024. Guarany-brand matchboxes, balsa wood, paper and coal. Photo: Damian Griffiths. Courtesy of the artist; Carlos/Ishikawa, London; and Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo.

Ming Smith

Can a photograph be audible? Are there properties in photographic images that can produce sound waves? Does every photograph have a soundtrack? If we think about the work of photographer Ming Smith, there’s no doubt that it’s possible and, moreover, advisable. Smith’s long career of street photography, mainly in black and white, makes her one of the most special examples of why the act of picking up a camera in search of capturing the things of the world, the sounds of the world, is accompanied by a feeling of immeasurability and, in this sense, also of justice. Ming’s relationship with music is manifold. This is evident in the images in which the photographer shows us her proximity to the US music scene, and to characters such as Grace Jones, David Murray, and James Brown, as well as countless blues concerts and improvisation ensembles, including trips to Berlin and Cairo. But as well as being thematic, music also drives the poetic process itself and materializes in the dim light of a number of the images, as well as in their blurriness, in the syncopation present in the clarity of the scene or lack of it in photographs such as those that portrait the jazz scene. Also in the effects caused by the shaking and movement of the photographer in her urban observation, which ultimately make photography and music present as manifestations of transparency and invisibility.

Symmetry on the Ivory Coast, Abidjan, Ivory Coast, 1972. Blackand-white photograph.

In Invisible Man (1988-1991), Ming’s interest lies in the relationship that this title bears with Ralph Ellison’s book of the same name, especially in the aspects that define his character, i.e. the substance, the flesh and blood, the fibres and the mind which, from being hyper-visible, invert their presence into invisibility. In the series, the sound and visual elements described – syncopation, blur, trepidation, low exposure – reach the field of the literary, in which scenes of the communal order, of the nocturnal encounter, of solitary wandering are composed like songs from a double album, with its main tracks as well as its remixes and versions. As a whole, the African-American and Black-diasporic experience in Ming Smith is given by the rhythm, the beat, and the vibrations of the camera on stage, in worship, at a concert, or in everyday life on the street.

André Pitol

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

Dakar Roadside with Figures, Dakar, Senegal, 1972. Digitally enlarged analog photograph, inkjet on paper. 24 × 36 cm.

Sun Ra Space II, New York, NY, 1978. Digitally enlarged analog photograph, inkjet on paper. 47 × 72 cm.

Théodore Diouf

According to Sereer’s oral accounts and cosmogony, the world originates from a supreme being named Roog (or Koox in Cangin languages), and its creation is inextricably linked to that of the swamp within which the first trees grew. Symbols of growth and fertility, trees amongst the Sereer (and several other communities) are considered living entities – equal to human beings – and our connection to them and nature, by extension, plays a crucial role in our understanding of humanity.

With a practice deeply informed by a faculty of observing nature, Senegalese visual artist Théodore Diouf has produced large bodies of work evocative of our relationship to nature. Attending various technical and art schools, namely the École des Arts de Dakar in the early 1970s, Diouf acquired several skills in notable disciplines such as sculpture and painting, consolidating the foundations for his artistic journey. As the artist points out in an interview, everything began in Bambilor (a town about 30km away from the capital Dakar), where he was a student and would rush to the forest every morning, meticulously sketching down in his notebook various forms encountered during his solitary wanderings.1 Both animate and inanimate, these forms evolved throughout time into an abstract and poetic visual language reflective of the artist’s immediate and home environment.

Les esprits de la nuit [Night Spirits], 2023. Wool tapestry, produced by Manufactures

Sénégalaises des Arts Décoratifs de Thiès, special edition. 175 × 228 cm. Private collection, Rio de Janeiro. Photo: Tevin Lima. Courtesy of the artist and OH GALLERY, Dakar.

Realized primarily on canvas and paper, using paint and pastel, Diouf’s works portray Senegalese flora’s vivid beauty and essence. Symbols such as that of the snake, representative of pangool (saints and ancestral spirits), recur in some of his paintings, highlighting the artist’s roots in African cosmogonies, particularly the Sereer one. Conscious of preconceived stereotypes surrounding African arts, then and now, Diouf’s works reflect a dynamic interplay of heritage and innovation, in which traditional motifs, symbolism, and techniques found within mask-making, sculpture, and textiles are reinterpreted and merged with modernist aesthetics, abstraction, and political narratives, creating a dialogue between past and present.

Billy Fowo

1. Excerpt from the essay by Coline Desportes, “Théodore Diouf, cinquante ans de création.” Dakar: OH Gallery, 2023.

Untitled, 2024. Acrylic on canvas. 151 × 121 cm. Photo: Morel Donou. Courtesy of the artist and OH GALLERY, Dakar.

Untitled, 1970–78. Acrylic on paper. 65 × 50 cm. Private collection, New York. Photo: Tevin Lima. Courtesy of the artist and OH GALLERY, Dakar.

This participation is supported by: Pro Helvetia

Berenice Olmedo

Rutilio, 2024. ThermoLyn orthoprosthetic, intramedullary femur nails, cortical screws, surgical steel traumatology instruments, aluminum tube and socket adapters for prosthesis, resin, lead. 247 × 60 × 47 cm.

Alum Gálvez. Courtesy of the artist and Lodos Gallery, Mexico City.

“Disability is not limited to the phenomena occurring in the body; disability is political.” This is how Berenice Olmedo positions herself, an “able-bodied human,” when asked by Jane Ursula Harris for the 2022 Flash article “Berenice Olmedo: The Myth of Autonomy.” Olmedo is an artist, researcher, and storyteller whose practice questions the structures of normality, ableism, class, and objectification as impositions of power and hierarchy. Her work centers on disability, differences, and otherness as a method of giving visibility to those on society’s margins and confronting crip erasure. Through publications, sculptures, kinetic objects, and installations, she explores disability as anthropogenesis, the political and societal structures of homogeneity, and the inequities of biopolitics. Her works boldly highlight societal fears and aversions to differences, investigating the use of technology to mediate the body.

As a volunteer for CRIT (Children’s Rehabilitation Institute TeletonUSA), a center for children with neuromuscular disabilities, the artist is attuned to the experiences,

Photo:

knowledge, and perspectives of people with disabilities. Utilizing medical-grade materials, orthotics, and prosthetics that she either collects from the receptacles of orthopedic workshops or buys from a flea market in the Mexico City neighborhood of Iztapalapa, Olmedo transforms them from utilitarian objects into sculptures. In doing so, she enacts storytelling as a method of activism, which the queer, Mad, femme of color scholar Dr. Shayda Kafai described in Crip Kinship as hard-to-swallow stories and activist acts for remembrance. The sense of remembrance and commemoration is most notable in some of the titles of Olmedo’s work, especially in the Anthroprosthetic series (2018), in which the prosthetic artifacts and accessories such as ballet shoes are given personal names after the pediatric patients who wore them. Therefore, she honors crip bodies and expands notions of an existence of sustainability that cannot subsist in a capitalist structure of productivity or usefulness.

In many of her interviews and writings, Olmedo asserts that “the human is entirely prosthetic” and encourages viewers to question how to embody and think in a non-normative existence. For her Eccéite exhibition in 2022, Olmedo wrote that the non-normative existence, also understood as a crip existence, “creates possibilities that allow [human beings] to think about themselves more as living beings rather than human beings.” Thus, if we can shift our thinking as living beings along with a crip existence, we can envision radical ways of being that thrive and survive out of capitalist structures of normalcy and ableism.

Marissa Del Toro

Olga, 2018. HKAFO (hip-knee-anklefoot orthosis), polypropylene, aluminum, velcro, mechatronics, motors, sensors, microcontrollers. 110 × 30 × 15 cm. Photo: Paul Schöpfer. Photo: Paul Schöpfer. Courtesy of the artist and Jan Kaps, Cologne.

Hajra Waheed

Studies for a Starry Night 1-94 (2019) is a sculptural installation comprising 94 unique hand-shaped plates of earthen stoneware and glazed porcelain. The work carefully extends Hajra Waheed’s signature exploration of the night sky, a meticulous repetition of a vast expanse that remains pivotal to the artist’s oeuvre. Long used as a guide for orientation and survival, the sky here becomes a site of quiet study, a meditation and mediation representing one sky fractured at once into multiple vantage points.

Both Studies for a Starry Night, 1-94 and The Kamal (2025) – a set of new works on paper inspired by a namesake poem written by the artist in 2018 – explore themes of navigation, displacement, and collective memory. The kamal, also known as the khashaba (meaning “wood” in Arabic), is a celestial navigational tool used to determine latitude, having enabled some of the earliest known latitude-based sailing. Developed by Arab seafarers in the 9th century and soon after adopted by Indian and East African sailors, it became widely used across the Indian Ocean, particularly for estimating distances to land. Its design required no written language or advanced instruments, making it accessible across diverse maritime cultures. Relying solely on physical alignment and memory – rather than on written instructions or mathematical calculations – the kamal was part of an oral and visual tradition, with its use passed down through generations of sailors, not through texts or charts, but through direct transmission: observation, repetition, and embodied practice. Waheed reflects on these metaphors of navigation, survival, and the capacity to find direction and hope, even amidst times of uncertainty. Born in 1980 in Canada and raised in Saudi Arabia, Waheed’s familial histories trace back to Hyderabad, India, with ancestral ties extending to regions including Turkey and Yemen – reflecting centuries of movement across and between the Indian Ocean and Central Asia. Though situated inland, Hyderabad was historically a major center of trade, scholarship, and cultural exchange, deeply connected

to both maritime and overland networks that linked the Indian subcontinent with Central Asia, Africa, and the broader Indian Ocean world. Early cartographic records and historical accounts capture the city’s strategic role within these global routes, documenting its layered history of encounter and transformation. This enduring legacy of mobility continues to shape Waheed’s life and work –grounding her explorations of displacement, orientation, and collective memory in a deeply personal, transregional lineage. Her practice continually resists borders, embodying a world shaped as much by rupture and exile as by connection and continuity.

Arthur Gruson

Hum II, 2023. Multichannel sound installation, 30’51”. Partial installation view from Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present (February – June 2023). Photo: Ismail Noor.

Hold Everything Dear, 2019. Installation view at The Power Plant, Toronto (September 2019 – January 2020). Photo: Tony Hafkenscheid.

Zózimo Bulbul

Zózimo Bulbul (1937-2013) was a film director and actor. He played the first Black lead in a Brazilian soap opera. He took part in the Cinema Novo movement, acting in some of the major productions of the time. A pioneer in all the artistic fronts he worked on, he refused to play stereotyped roles, although racism surrounded his career and restricted many of his movements. Possibly the most emblematic case is the film Compasso de espera [Waiting] (1969), by Antunes Filho, in which he played a middle-class Black man who becomes involved with a white woman, maintaining an interracial relationship disapproved of by everyone – including the censors of Brazilian military dictatorship, who did not allow the film to be distributed.

Zózimo is considered the “creator” of Brazilian Black cinema, not because he was the first (other Black directors produced films in Brazil before him), but because of his inaugural gesture and proposition in his short film Alma no olho [Soul in the Eye] (1973). It’s worth mentioning the film’s experimentalism, with the director himself acting, accompanied by the music of John Coltrane, recounting in a performative way the history of Black people on the American continent from the perspective of Blackness. The film laid the foundations for Black auteur cinema in Brazil, based on the concept of Black people directing and scripting their narratives in order to get their points of view and stories into print.

In the midst of the military dictatorship, the film had numerous problems with the censors. The director was made to give evidence and was questioned about scenes in the film that were considered left-wing. For this reason, in 1974, Zózimo decided to leave the country, taking a copy of the film with him and presenting it internationally. He returned to Brazil in 1977. He continued to create works throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mostly producing short films. The best known is the emblematic Abolição [Abolition] (1988), a long narrative that uses research material and testimonies to discuss the end of slavery in Brazil, social exclusion, and the resistance of the Black population.

In 2007, after a trip to Toulouse, France, Zózimo realized that it would be necessary to create his own exhibition spaces so that his films could be seen, since there were no exhibition venues willing to host his work. This led to a concern to collectively articulate ways of promoting and popularizing Black, African, and diasporic audiovisual production. This is how the Centro Afro-Carioca de Cinema [Afro-Carioca Film Center] came about, a place for the presentation and discussion of Black filmmakers. Following the concerns of its founder and a quilombista becoming, the Center has become a space for memory and the conception of a Black aesthetic in Brazilian cinema, responsible for the Encontros de Cinema Negro – Brasil, África & Caribe [Black Cinema Meetings – Brazil, Africa, & Caribbean], currently in its 17th edition. It is estimated that more than 1.500 works by filmmakers from Africa, the Caribbean, and Brazil have been screened, with a focus on promoting the films rather than competition.

Raquel Barreto

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

Portrait of the artist during the filming of Abolição, 1988. Courtesy of Biza Vianna and the Centro Afro Carioca de Cinema Zózimo Bulbul, Rio de Janeiro.

Nguyễn Trinh Thi

Nguyễn Trinh Thi works with film, yet she always questions and resists the structures imposed by the medium in the image and the camera. As our globalized and westernized cultures have come to be visually dominated, she feels the need to look for a more sensitive approach to perceiving the world by paying more attention to aural landscapes. That was how she became interested in working with sound to focus on listening. For her most recent works – And They Die a Natural Death (2022), presented at documenta 15, and Ri s̄eīyng’ [Sound-Less] (2023), presented at the 3rd Thailand Biennale – she created an environment open toward the invisible, allowing unpredictable forces, human and non-human alike, to enter, make sound, and – listen. In Ri s̄eīyng’, this structure transpired into a series of automated instruments, activated by signals coded from the Mekong River’s water flow. As dictated by live data, the sounds created by the instruments fluctuated, requiring audiences to be fully present in order to experience the work.

Work in progress with wind, string, and percussion instruments at the studio in Hanoi. Photo: Jamie Maxtone-Graham.

Within sounds, you can see a plurality of back-and-forth between human and non-human. For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, she returned to the instruments’ functional structure and sound-making potential, transcending cultural boundaries, by incorporating a vast array of automated instruments – some from Vietnam, others locally sourced. The soundscape, composed by Nguyễn with influences of music from East Asia, is ever-changing, constantly being randomized, interrupted, or silenced in interactions with movements and the human voice in the space, as well as with levels of sunlight in the room which is itself constructed to be an over-sized camera obscura. When detecting a movement or human voice, for example, the instruments will stop playing, resulting in silence until stillness is restored, like in the woods, where the soundscape of birds, animals, and spirits only unfolds fully when you are calmly listening.

Hung Duong

Mao Ishikawa

Untitled from the series Red Flower – The Women of Okinawa, 1975–1977. Print on cotton paper. 38 × 48 cm. Courtesy of the artist and POETIC SCAPE, in cooperation with the Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum.

In 1972, still in the midst of the Cold War, the island of Okinawa was reincorporated into Japan after 25 years of US military occupation. Although the administration was officially transferred to the Japanese government, bilateral security agreements allowed the military bases to remain, consolidating Okinawa as one of the main US strategic posts in the Pacific region. It is in this context that photographer Mao Ishikawa’s photo book Hot Days in Camp Hansen!! (1975-1977) was born, which was reissued in 2017 under the title Red Flower, The Women of Okinawa. The images produced by Ishikawa feature two social groups deeply rooted in the Okinawan daily life of the 1970s: US soldiers and the women from the town of Kin, who worked in the bars around Camp Hansen and often had affective and sexual relationships with these men. Refusing an accusatory or exoticizing photojournalistic approach, Ishikawa does not present a denunciation of the history of exploitation perpetrated by the US military. Instead, she reveals a complex network of affection and solidarity between individuals who share common feelings and a common life – low-ranking soldiers, mostly Black and displaced from their country, and Okinawan women in subordinate roles, living in a territory historically marginalized in relation to the Japanese state. Mao Ishikawa never placed herself as an outside observer of the universe she was portraying. In her own words: “This is not an infiltration report. I didn’t aim to take ‘sneak peek’ photographs from a bystander’s perspective. […] Shooting doesn’t begin until I step into the scene. It’s certainly a documentary and yet my own emotional record as well.

Untitled from the series Life in Philly, 1986. Print on cotton paper. 38 × 48 cm. Courtesy of the artist and POETIC SCAPE, in cooperation with the Okinawa

That’s why it was important to work at a bar for US soldiers. I intended to become a Kin woman myself.”1

Untitled from the series Red Flower –The Women of Okinawa, 1975–1977. Print on cotton paper. 38 × 48 cm. Courtesy of the artist and POETIC SCAPE, in cooperation with the Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum.

In tune with the contestatory spirit of Okinawan youth in the 1970s – influenced by international anti-imperialist movements, protests against the Vietnam War, and civil rights struggles in the United States – Ishikawa went beyond the island’s borders and traveled to Philadelphia, where she spent about two months living with her friend Myron Carr, a former soldier. With a radically human gaze, she portrays the context of origin of the men with whom she shared a daily life in Okinawa. Far from the militarized environment, her photos capture scenes of friends and family meeting, children playing, relaxed conversations on the sofa, and walks through the city’s streets.

Leonardo Matsuhei

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

1. What Can I Do?. Tokyo: Tokyo Opera City Cultural Foundation, 2023. (exhibition catalog). This participation is supported by: National Center for Art Research, Japan

Prefectural Museum & Art Museum.

Michele Ciacciofera

Interested in the multiple relationships between humans and the environment, Michele Ciacciofera investigates the reverberations of these interactions in mythological, historical, and cultural systems. His work focuses on the experience of the observing subject, considering the pluralities inherent in each individual and their ways of interacting with the universe. The environmentalist character of his practice stems from ecological concerns developed during his studies in political science and guides his interest in traditional building techniques. These include the Nurago (or Nuraghe), a megalithic architectural typology characteristic of Sardinia in southern Italy during the Nuragic Age (1900–730 BC). The in-depth study of these traditions results in sculptures and installations produced by Ciacciofera in collaboration with local artists. In The Nest of the Eternal Present (2025), a work presented at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Ciacciofera uses the pau a pique technique, a construction system that makes use of local materials such as clay, wood, and gravel, in an artisanal process interwoven with Indigenous, Afro-diasporic, and European knowledge and widely used during Brazil’s colonial period.

The Secret Garden of the Stelae, 2014–2022. View of the sound installation. Photo: Aurélien Mole. Courtesy of the artist and Passerelle Centre d’Art Contemporain, Brest.

We Are All In This Together, 2015. Installation view. Photo: Aurélien Mole. Courtesy of the artist and Musée d’Art Contemporain de Rochechouart.

The sound installation was conceived in the form of a multidimensional electronic concert. His sculptures, made of glazed ceramic and papier-mâché, take on hybrid and dreamlike morphologies, evoking fusions between human, plant, and animal. Sound, a central element of the work, is orchestrated by the artist by manipulating the songs of thirty species of birds, expanding the possibilities of dialogue between digital technological tools and natural phenomena. The sound waves accentuate the threedimensionality of the installation and invite the viewer into an immersive experience as they move between figures arranged around a circular earthen nest.

The Nest of the Eternal Present also evokes the Persian poem “The Conference of the Birds”, in which birds cross mystical valleys in search of collective self-knowledge, while at the same time dialoguing with the discovery of fossilized titanosaur nests in Minas Gerais, establishing a symbolic continuity between the prehistoric past, spirituality, and an ecological future in which humans, animals, and landscapes share an interconnected destiny.

The installation emphasizes the relevance of the spatial arrangement of the sculptural elements and their interrelationships, evoking both the agglomeration of megalithic forms and the gathering of individuals in spiritual congregation. By activating the power contained in the act of congregating, Ciacciofera proposes the construction of the dwelling – and, in the case of this installation, the nest – as an essential exercise in humanity.

Mateus Nunes

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program, and Instituto Italiano di Cultura de São Paulo

The Inner State, 2021. View of the sound installation. Photo: Aurélien Mole. Courtesy of the artist and Musée d’Art Contemporain de Rochechouart.

Josèfa Ntjam

The digital era and the media are mechanisms of contemporary art that Josèfa Ntjam manipulates and combines in her sculptures, films, photomontages, and sounds, using them as tools to reflect on biology, traditional African narratives, and the very construction of science fiction. Ntjam conducts meticulous research on historical events, philosophical concepts, and scientific functions, demonstrating an interest in unearthing hidden and erased narratives as a way of reinterpreting established knowledge. With works that transcend temporal and spatial boundaries, the artist creates alternative realities and possible futures. In these spaces, the artist dissolves fixed categories and identities to make way for new ways of being, existing, and knowing. The artist’s films, which invite the audience to explore a complex ecosystem of organisms, are imbued with plasticity, color, and form. They can be compared to observations made through a telescope or microscope. This perspective expands our discernment of reality, heightened by a profusion of colors and organic forms that cohabit the space and result in a creation, expressing an intense relationship with the nature of nature, which is in constant transformation and interconnection.

In her practice, music plays a fundamental role in the narrative that challenges Western linearity. Under the influence of Sun Ra’s afrofuturism and the rhythm of jazz, the sound creates a sense of ambiguity and mystery for the audience, representing both a post-apocalyptic moment and the beginning of a new era.

Ana Paula Lopes

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Dislocations, 2022. Video stills. HD video, color, sound; 18’. Written and directed by

in collaboration

and

Josèfa Ntjam,

with Sean Hart and Nicolas Pirus. Co-produced by Aquatic Invasion Production, Palais de Tokyo, Paris,

Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati. Costume: Paola Idrontino. © ADAGP, 2025.

Lynn Hershman Leeson

Multimedia artist Lynn Hershman Leeson is known for her use of video, performance, and the creation of avatars to interrogate issues of gender, surveillance, and the representation of the feminine. At the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, she presents her groundbreaking life project The Electronic Diaries (1984–ongoing), in which she unflinchingly exposes her own life against the backdrop of contemporary technological developments, repeatedly questioning how these advances shape our humanity, our ways of living together, and our ways of relating to each other. The chapters developed between 1984 and 2019 are complemented here, for the first time, by her most recent one: About Time (2025). Recording intimate confessions over decades and addressing themes such as trauma and personal transformation, in The Electronic Diaries the artist sees the camera as a confiding mirror, creating a space for narrative experimentation that anticipates contemporary discussions about self-image and the digitalization of subjectivity. In her work, Leeson combines technological means and artificial intelligence to, in many ways, reclaim the narrative of her own existence, destabilizing dynamics of domination and pointing to the possibility of negotiating with the world through self-archiving and digital mediation. The Electronic Diaries fulfills the persistence of a project that, for decades, has evinced the transformation of technology and of the artist herself. By continuously recording herself, Leeson not only documents her personal history but also anticipates debates about the performativity of identity in the age of social networks, hyperconnectivity, and digital manipulation.

The Electronic Diaries (1984–2019), 2019. Installation view at the exhibition Manual Override, The Shed, New York. Photo: Dan Bradica.

Her electronic diaries bear witness to a time when the boundary between the so-called “real” and the fabricated is dissolving into screens and algorithms, in which identity no longer seems to be a fixed destination, but a file that is constantly being edited. Thus, Leeson’s work is inscribed in the very mutable skin of our era, where to exist is to rewrite oneself, time and again, in the volatile memory of machines, while to exist is also to rework the escapes from an increasingly policed and vigilant digital fabric.

Rita Vênus

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

Richianny Ratovo

Drawing on traditional craft techniques and the material culture of her Malagasy heritage, Richianny Ratovo developed her very own aesthetic language that expands principles of classic painting and photography. She works with a wide range of materials, such as leather, glass, or cork, and transforms her mediums with a great joy in experimentation and sensibility to their distinctive material quality. She combines drawing and painting techniques with sculptural methods such as etching and pyrography, exploring notions of presence and absence, place and time, and thus memory in a poetic yet material-driven way.

For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, she has created a new body of work that builds on her previous abstract paintings on gate-sized glass panels that were suspended from the ceiling in the exhibition space. The new series’ title is Antsoantso (2025), which means “call” in Malagasy – a strong and firm but friendly invitation that we want to listen and hold on to when everything else around us feels uncertain; a voice that serves as a personal guide. In Antsoantso, each canvas stands for the silent conversation between us and the world, between what we hold on to

Somambisamby, 2023. Paint, resin and glass. Installation view at Hakanto Contemporary, Antananarivo. Photo: Hakanto Contemporary.

and what we let go of – like the breath, memories, or the changing of the seasons. For these new pieces, Ratovo experimented with algae-based paper and natural fibres, combining textile and painting techniques with engraving. Just like her previous works on glass, also here the panels are suspended from the ceiling and thus allow the natural light and the shadows of people walking by to shine through, reflecting on the delicate balance between materiality and lightness, permanence and impermanence, reflection and transparency.

Anna Roberta Goetz

Cici Wu with Yuan Yuan

Belonging and Difference (2023) is a short film and a long-distance collaborative endeavor between Cici Wu and Yuan Yuan. Together, they used 16mm film and digital video, with text written in Traditional Chinese and English, and a short voice-over narration in Cantonese. The work began with footage from East Broadway Mall in New York’s Chinatown during the pandemic, where workers describe both their expectations regarding working conditions and the actual circumstances in a neighborhood that is gradually becoming more vacant and transforming daily. It then moves to footage from Beijing, captured around the time of the White Paper Protest – both before and after –including scenes of quarantine, family life, memorial sites of June 4th, and an underground queer party, ending with footage from Hong Kong: the cross-harbor tunnel, which references the siege of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, a wound that still remains open. At the heart of this work, the artists explore how the notions of “diasporic” and “migratory” are indexed, suggesting the potential of migratory aesthetics rather than territorial defense as an experimental means of repair – continuously narrating, expressing, liberating, and awakening. They search along manifold routes and

pathways for ways to negotiate identity not through geography or nationality, but rather through flexible networks of social belonging and political alignment.

The memories of the isolation caused by transit and travel between Beijing, Hong Kong, and New York in 2022 and 2023 linger. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes behind. The world of life and the world of film occupy the same temporal flow, and as spectators –caught between horizons, blurred images, and unexpected breaks – we move between belonging and difference. “Belonging and difference” is, in fact, the dimension that fundamentally shapes Cici and Yuan’s video work. But while the idea of belonging might suggest a sense of group or community unity, here it is much more closely linked to difference – as a productive force and a constant movement of transformation. Identity escapes this equation. An alternative notion of identity is put to the test: porous and circulating, discontinuous and errant.

André Pitol

Belonging and Difference, 2023. Video stills. 16 mm film transferred to digital video. Video, color, sound; 24’.

Laila Hida

In Sange Khara [Hard Stone] (2025), developed for the 36th Bienal, Laila Hida offers a landscape where memory is not narrated, but circled – tentatively, tenderly, with the gravity of something sacred and half-forgotten. The project stages a kind of poetic inquiry where images seem to emerge from a re-constructed memory anchored by a 16mm film and expanded through an immersive installation. Characters cross paths, brought together through a tapestry of iconographic and cinematic references: the young woman from The Wanderers of the Desert (1984), the couple in The Sheltering Sky (1990). Two young guys ride their bikes and strike poses on a dirt road as if freshly cast in a rap video summoning an apparition, a construct of a landscape, the desert, the oasis, and the people who inhabit them, filtered through cinema and image. The video unfolds as a loop of interwoven images, each slipping into the next. It drifts from one reference to another, bridging temporalities, geographies, aesthetics, and narratives. The whole installation invites visitors to sit, lie down, and pause. Its scenographic elements and layout evoke spaces of shade and desert architecture, in which every detail serves a practical function while carrying a quiet, deliberate aesthetic.

Hida’s work has long explored how memory and desire survive in fragments, images, objects, gestures that slip between fact and fiction. Here, she builds a setting where

Into the Maw of the Spectacle, 2024. Video still. HD video, color, sound; 16’16”.

the coordinates of plot, belief, and explanation dissolve. What remains is sonic residue, atmospheric drift, handmade clues. The film gestures toward the fabrication of landscapes, trans-Saharan crossings, and post-colonial imaginaries, but it does so with quiet insistence, avoiding spectacle. And the installation doesn’t ask to be understood so much as inhabited. Meaning is not stated; it is stumbled into. Or perhaps, like the circles in the sand, it is something you only recognize by returning.

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program

Cameron Ah Loo-Matamua

Le Voyage du Phoenix: Miracle Springs, 2023.

Sange Khara: Mythology II, 2025.

Korakrit Arunanondchai

Korakrit Arunanondchai is a visual artist and filmmaker whose practice unfolds between New York and Bangkok, weaving together references from pop culture, spirituality, geopolitics, and technology. His work combines painting, performance, and video to build hybrid narratives where reality and fiction, past and future, individual and collective intermingle. For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, the artist presents a video installation that deepens his ongoing exploration of the Asian horror genre as a vehicle for examining postcolonial relations and the extractive structures of Western art.

In Unity for Nostalgia (2025), Arunanondchai plays the role of an artist who travels to Thailand in search of an alleged “origen culture,” personified by the figure of a ghost that needs human flesh to continue existing. This figure comes to embody the Western consciousness in its encounter with the “Spiritual East.” The ghost, in turn, serves as a living metaphor for the persistence of memories and structures erased by dominant historical narratives. The work employs the grammar of horror to reflect on cultural erasure and extraction as forms of ongoing violence. The narrative unfolds across two contrasting yet interconnected settings: a stage made of ashes, where the artist performs, and an abandoned cinema overtaken by monkeys. These environments are traversed by cycles of heat, energy, and spirit, suggesting a choreography between the material and the immaterial, the spoken

Unity for Nostalgia, 2025. Video stills. HD video. © Korakrit Arunanondchai, 2025. Courtesy of the artist; Bangkok CityCity Gallery; Carlos/Ishikawa, London; C L E A R I N G, New York; and Kukje Gallery, Seoul.

and the unspoken. As the artist himself points out, Asian horror in Southeast Asia operates in a way analogous to science fiction – as a space for projecting fears, hopes, and historical ghosts. Through this image, Unity for Nostalgia creates a space for encounter and conflict, revealing layers of memory and expectation that remain latent. Internationally recognized, Arunanondchai has presented solo exhibitions at renowned institutions. He is also the founder of GHOST, a platform dedicated to video art in Asia. His work has been instrumental in examining the intersections between contemporary art, spirituality, and the reverberations of colonialism in Southeast Asia.

Text provided by the artist

Maxwell Alexandre

Maxwell Alexandre was born in Rocinha, one of the most populous favelas in Latin America, into an evangelical family. He was a professional street skater for many years and also served in the army. He became acquainted with art during his undergraduate studies in design at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and soon afterwards entered the art circuit, becoming one of the most prominent young artists in contemporary Brazilian art.

Maxwell Alexandre’s practice often subverts the traditional limits of Western painting, evident in his choice of brown paper – often considered rudimentary – as his main working medium, “ennobled” by his gesture. This choice engages politically with the polysemy of the concept of brown in Brazil. His pictorial compositions emphasize images of Black characters, both real and imaginary, notable for the signs of power and pride they bear, seen in their body posture and the way they dress – without overlooking the fact that these same bodies are subject to state persecution and police violence. With the series Novo poder [New Power], the artist rehearsed a majority-Black occupation of the white cube of museums and galleries, from which they have historically been excluded. He also draws on the influence of national rap poetry by artists such as Djonga, Baco Exu do Blues, and BK, who are part of his repertoire.

Maxwell Alexandre subverts institutional distribution circuits and presents his work in spaces that contemporary art does not usually reach – his own community, Rocinha, among others. This was the case with his installation Encruzilhada [Crossroad] (2021), first exhibited at Paço Imperial and later presented at Morro do Santo Amaro, both in Rio de Janeiro, where it took on a new order and activation through the local community.

Untitled, 2021. Bitumen, latex and acrylic on pardo paper. 160 × 120 cm. Photo: Thiago Barros. Courtesy of the artist and Estúdio Megazord.

For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, the artist is presenting the installation Galeria 2 [Gallery 2] (2025), from the series Cubo branco [White Cube], once again using polysemy as a conceptual element that names the work and proposes a reflection on one of the most powerful ideologies in the history of Western art. The work is not just an installation but an ongoing dialogue with the very structures that have long governed the narrative of art. To further this reflection, the artist introduces a conceptual painting – an empty golden frame on brown paper – placed within the climate-controlled space usually reserved for historical artworks. The frames he paints on paper and the white cubes he creates carve out space within the lineage of art history that has traditionally depicted beauty. Alexandre’s practice redefines beauty as a radical force – one that challenges historical norms and pushes back against the historical violence of erasure in art history.

Raquel Barreto

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

Galeria 1 [Gallery 1], 2023. Oil on pardo paper. 570 × 240 × 240 cm. Photo: Edouard Fraipont. Courtesy of the artist and Estúdio Megazord.

Untitled, 2022. Latex and xerox transfer on pardo paper. 240 × 1440 cm. Photo: Adam Reich. Courtesy of the artist and Estúdio Megazord.

Isa Genzken

Spontaneity, incompleteness, and unconventionality characterize Isa Genzken’s iconic artistic practice developed over the last five decades. Working in diverse mediums and materials throughout her expansive career, Genzken is well-known for her sculptures, installations, and films that explore contemporary realism. Since the late 1990s, Isa Genzken has been working with everyday objects as insignia of the consumer world, combining them with industrial decorative materials as well as image fragments from popular media and personal photographs. She creates unique assemblages, wall pieces, and three-dimensional sceneries in various scales from what she calls “real-world materials,” such as mass-produced toys, cheap consumer goods, ubiquitous cardboard boxes, and shiny Mylar.

Schauspieler III, 3 [Actor III, 3], 2015. Nine mannequins, mixed media. 196 × 275 × 268 cm. Installation view at Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. Photo: Axel Schneider. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / AUTVIS, São Paulo.

Along with the detritus materials in many of Genzken’s works, social space and interaction are additional critical components of her work. Mirrors or reflective surfaces allow her viewers to see themselves reflected in the works. Frequently, her sculptures and installations animate the viewer to make moves around and put themselves in relation to them. Thus, the viewer’s actions become part of the work and lend to the sense of uncertainty and spontaneity that Genzken modishly plays with. The feeling of empty space is connected to the artist’s constant interest in architectural forms. Raised in the reformation phase of postwar West Germany, Genzken uses in her works the deconstructed or reconstructed ruins of the urban landscape as a method to convey ideas of loss, imperfection, and modernity.

In recent years, Genzken has created life-size scenes with mannequins that she dresses in her own worn clothing, complemented by work and protective clothing, and finally accentuated with decorative materials and spray paint. Blinded by reflective foils or silenced with colorful adhesive tape, the figures become poignantly close and undisguised self-portraits of the artist. In her series Schauspieler [Actor], which includes the 2015 works presented at the Bienal, she stages her mannequin as “actors” in various configurations seemingly based on narratives to convey layers of issues, from sociopolitics to the media and the body. Their story is everchanging, on the one hand dependent on and relevant to the region and period in which they are displayed. Generally seen in troupe formations, occasionally as a family, these arragement of figurines, on the other hand, reflect basic human relationship constellations. Withdrawn and vacuous, they exude a sense of incompleteness and confounding campiness when viewed. Yet, alone in the space, they are another part of the architecture, functioning as a caryatid standing as detached architectural support and column watching the world’s current change over time.

Marissa Del Toro

Werewere Liking

The work of Werewere Liking establishes a realm of powerful energies in which sculpture, word, and myth not only coexist but vibrate on the same ritualistic frequency. Liking’s creations, made from found, recycled, and re-signified elements, are not mere forms that occupy space: they are enchanted bodies, living inscriptions of memory and imagination. Her poems expand this experience, reconfiguring the relationship between language, matter, and spirituality, as if each fragment spoke the secret language of time.

Gathering, reassembling, re-invoking: these gestures intertwine as virtuous practices against forgetfulness. In Liking, the reimagining of the creative process is also a restructuring of creativity that pulses around community, collective growth, construction, and the search for meaning. The artist names this creative field as Ki-Yi Mbock, a concept from the Bassa tradition in Cameroon, referring to supreme universal knowledge. In this territory, just as in ancient times, art and life are inseparable: the creations do not merely occupy space, but reorganize it, converting experiences into portals of autonomy. Her sculptures are not fixed archives, but mobile constellations, in which past, present, and future intertwine in a rhizome of multiple potentialities. Each piece breaks the

Les Usuriers des Serments 4 – Jurer Sur Tous les Cieux [The Usurers of Oaths 4 –Swearing by All the Skies], 2020. Acrylic, canvas, poster papers. 122 × 60,5 cm.

historical linearity and establishes an expanded, dense vitality, in which what is rejected is reactivated as the elaboration of new cosmogonies, with overlapping narratives and politics. Here, the world does not present itself as a static given, but as an entity of infinite inscription. Liking’s presence is, above all, a force that operates as a cosmic compass, a map to multiple realities. The making that emanates from her is thought, pulsation, a noble breath that touches the sensitive. She delivers to us vibrational fields, territories that cross between the spiritual and the earthly, the movement of life rewritten through the sculpting of words and forms, which, for her, is like invoking ancestry.

Her work is not merely in the world but establishes another way of inhabiting it, becoming traces of futurations, something that affirms itself as a method for a dignified life, an invitation to feel the essence of things in a magnified way. These effects bear fruit in the spirit of a master who lives in the plenitude of eternal movement.

Nathalia Grilo

This participation is supported by: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen –

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Nids Lumineux 2 [Luminous Nests 2], 2023. Cocoma stump and textile lampshade glued with neoprene. 94 × 71 cm.

Les Usuriers des Serments 3 – Bouches Fleuries de Serments [The Usurers of Oaths 3 – Oath-Blooming Mouths], 2020. Acrylic, canvas, paper. 82 × 60 cm.

María Magdalena Campos-Pons

To speak the unspeakable, to bear witness, and to behold the truth are at the core of María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s sweeping forty-year career as a multidisciplinary artist. Her practice spans a range of intermixed mediums, from installations, performances, and photographic works to paintings, sculptures, and videos that address race, history, memory, gender, religion-spirituality, and sociopolitical issues. Much of her work is created from an autobiographical narrative based on her family stories and background as a Cuban-born artist descended from Hispanic and Chinese immigrants and enslaved Nigerians brought to the island in the 19th century. Campos-Pons utilizes her intersectionality as a source of power and position to represent the narratives, experiences, and realities within her work. Her identity and artwork sit within an intangible and in-between space she visualizes through the body as both subject and gesture. The body within Campos-Pon’s work is often staged, fragmented, accumulated, or performed to channel a collective and individual memory of existence and resistance.

Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity, 2024. Commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy, in partnership with Harlem Art Park. Photo: Argenis Apolinario.

Untitled from the series The Rise of the Butterflies, 2021. Archival digital inkjet prints, watercolor, ink, gouache, gum arabic, BFK archival paper. Ten panels, each 104,1 × 73,7 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin.

In many pieces, Campos-Pons’s use of self-portraiture conveys the spiritual, internal, and embodied knowledge of her family’s and ancestral roots in Santería practices. Developed in 19th-century Cuba, Santería, also known as Regla de Ocha or Lucumí, is a syncretic religion derived from the traditional West African religion of Yoruba and Catholicism. In the curator and scholar Carmen Hermo’s essay “María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold,” she notes how Campos-Pons taps into “Santería’s emphasis on embodied knowledge in practices like ritual processions, herbalism, songs, and chants, and in the foundational Yoruba belief that existence spans two realms: the physical and tangible, and the spiritual.” The emphasis on embodied knowledge is critical to Campos-Pons’s practice, where she addresses the historical legacy of colonialism, the transatlantic enslaved trade, human suffering, and survivor’s guilt by tapping into collective and individual memory as a method for healing and spiritual cleansing. Her use of memories as her artistic language honors the people, places, and resistive acts of the Americas.

Often, recurring symbols, such as eyes, butterflies, and pomegranates, along with depictions of water, fauna, trees, and plants, function as metaphors and themes connected to the spirituality of healing but also function in the simple ways of remembrance, endurance, confidence, and beauty. Through her work, Campos-Pons gives viewers an emotional connection for contemplation, optimistic strength, the power of survival, and access to energy not typically embraced in our contemporary society. Campos-Pons is an artist who channels the energy of the Black body, experiences, and realities as a form of visual communication to past and present information but, above all, as an homage to future times and possibilities for human existence.

Marissa Del Toro

Chapter 6 The Intractable Beauty of the World

This Bienal ends with the initial thesis of this exhibition: beauty itself is political and, for the disenfranchised of the world, beauty is resistance – for them, a little beauty would make them more human. The beauty talked about here is the kind Ben Okri writes about in his “Musings on Beauty,” included in his poetry collection A Time for New Dreams: “The beauty of surfaces and the beauty of depths. Beauty in ugliness. Beauty in how time resolves evil. Beauty in birth and beauty in death. Beauty in the ordinary. Beauty in memory, in fading things, in forms perceived and not perceived. Beauty in awkward, unfinished, ruined, broken things. Beauty in creation and in destruction. Beauty in time and in timelessness. Beauty in the infinite that encompasses all, before the beginning and beyond the end.” A beauty like the one Bebe Manga carries in her voice in the song “Ami.”

In this chapter, this beauty is found in the quotidian, in real and abstract depictions of the artists’s realities, in Yoruba, Nguemba, Amazigh, Caribbean, Cape Malay, Urdu, Māori, Arab, Kemetic, Candomblé or Santeria, inter alia, cosmogonies, in Sufi chants and practices, in Zar imaginaries, in No poetry, in Indigenous, Black, feminist, queer, and other struggles, in our languages, and much more. This chapter questions colonial and capitalist programs and their futures, it proposes other writings and modes of seeing writings on the walls, it proposes other ways of relating to our ancestries and ascendencies, and situates us within a plurality of spiritual groundings. Besides the notion of beauty, the accent here is placed on the notion of the intractable. Yes, there is beauty in the world and in conjugating humanity, and we must reclaim that in the face of all the violences that humanity and the world seem to have been reduced to.

This chapter and this Bienal as a whole are dedicated to someone who carried the intractable beauty of the world inside and outside: Madame Koyo Kouoh.

Bertina Lopes

Born in Mozambique, Bertina Lopes (1924-2012) was a pioneer of African modernism, ushering in a mélange of forms that reflected her political reality as a Black woman amid war and exile. Her oeuvre is marked by a subversion of style and genre, as she plays with principles of surrealism, cubism, abstraction, and gestural painting, ultimately marked by a stylistic freedom that evades definition. Lopes was deeply tied to political movements in Mozambique, and her early paintings reflect a melancholic surrealism rooted in her yearning for independence. These early works are marked by a gestural figuration evocative of the somber daily life of Mozambiquans under colonization. The abstraction of the figure featured early in her practice. The civil war that followed the 1975 Mozambican independence only strengthened Lopes’s references to modernist abstraction, as her compositions took on dynamic perspectives and more symbolism. Exiled in Rome for most of her life, Lopes maintained a commitment to exploring Mozambican identity under restricted, political rules.

Viagem I [Journey I], 1972. Oil on canvas. 100 × 120 cm.

© Archivio Bertina Lopes. Courtesy of Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, Rome, and New York.

Untitled, 1977. Oil

140 × 200 cm. © Archivio

This engagement with African cultural symbolism and identity, despite her physical distance from the continent, can be seen, for example, in the way totems from African communities appear in her work – placing the contribution of her continent of origin at the center of a body of work marked by its avant-garde character. Lopes was always at the forefront of modernist movements. She engaged with elements of impressionism and cubism, styles once thought to be European movements. By deconstructing, blurring, abstracting, and smudging the archetypes of African symbolism, Lopes’s work remains enigmatic, defying the neat categorizations of formalism, as can be seen in the paintings on view at this 36th Bienal de São Paulo.

This is not the first time Bertina Lopes has been invited to participate in the Bienal. She was previously included in the 7th edition, in 1963, but firmly refused to participate under the national representation of Portugal, the colonizing country. This commitment will be on view in her current participation in the 36th Bienal, the artist’s largest exhibition in Brazil.

Margarita Lila Rosa

on canvas.

Bertina Lopes. Courtesy of Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, Rome, and New York.

Maria Auxiliadora

Maria Auxiliadora (1935–1974) was the fourth daughter in a family of farmers, composed of eighteen siblings, originally from Campo Belo (Minas Gerais), who moved to São Paulo when she was three years old. They lived in various regions of the city, including Casa Verde, a well-known neighborhood for samba musicians. Auxiliadora began working at a very young age, around twelve years old, which prevented her from continuing her studies. She worked as a nanny, maid, cook, and also as an embroiderer until she was able to dedicate herself exclusively to painting.

Like many other Black artists, Auxiliadora did not receive formal art education, although she grew up in a deeply artistic family – among her relatives were writers, painters, and musicians. It is said that her mother, an artist who sculpted figures in wood and sold them in República Square, central area of São Paulo, was the one who encouraged her to paint. Her professional involvement with the arts began in 1968 and lasted until 1974, when she passed away at the age of 39 due to cancer. During this brief period, she produced and circulated a significant amount of work, and attended the group led by poet Solano Trindade in the city of Embu das Artes. She met critics and collectors, which allowed her work to gain exposure, though it was almost always categorized as “primitive” or “naïve” – a simplistic and elitist fixation that failed to acknowledge the formal qualities of her work. In 1971, she held her first solo exhibition at the library of the United States Consulate in São Paulo.

Capoeira, 1970. MIxed media on canvas. 69,5 × 75 × 1,5 cm. MASP Collection. Courtesy of Pedro Ivo Silva and MASP.

Velório da noiva [The Bride’s Wake], 1974. Oil and polyester paste on canvas. 50 × 100 cm. Photo: Eduardo Ortega. MASP Collection. Courtesy of

In formal terms, Auxiliadora developed her own painting technique. Among her innovations was the use of a gesso preparation that she applied to her paintings, which gave her work a three-dimensional quality. Her technique highlights meticulous details, particularly in the faces, hands, and clothing of her subjects, imparting a sense of intimacy and authenticity. Her vibrant color palette enhances the vitality of the figures, while her compositions emphasize the details that humanize and elevate each person portrayed. This attention to detail and color reflects an aesthetic care that intensifies the narrative of valorizing Black culture and the subjectivity of Black people. The textile element and the relationship with fashion stand out, with the constant presence of embroidery marking her work as unique. The artist exhibits an aesthetic that blends elements of realism with components of storytelling, particularly in works that address the theme of Afro-Brazilian religions.

Auxiliadora created a poetics of Black intimacy that reconstituted “universes of subjectivity artificially thinned out and re-singularized.”1 Her work, dominated by a semantic focus on intimacy, is nourished by a visual repertoire that celebrates the creation of beauty and closeness through everyday, familial, intimate, religious, labor, festive, and joyful scenes from her community. Her works express a sense of belonging that symbolizes a collective existence.

Raquel Barreto

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

1. See Félix Guattari, Caosmose: Um novo paradigma estético. São Paulo: Editora 34, 1993, p.31.

Pedro Ivo Silva and MASP.

Chaïbia Talal

Chaïbia Talal (1929-2004) was a Moroccan painter born in Chtouka, a small village near El Jadida, Morocco. She was married at the age of thirteen, before having a son, and became a widow at fifteen. Her own storytelling is that her dreams saved her when at 25 years old some strangers appeared to her and offered her pens and leaves to draw on. Immediately inspired, she took up painting and was eventually the first Moroccan woman artist to make an international career, especially through an encounter with the French curator Pierre Gaudibert in 1965. As selftaught artist, her paintings are raw and unpredictable, colorful and neo-expressionist, raising some echoes of Asger Jorn and the CoBrA painting movement. At first, her work was not well received in Morocco, as she was seen as a derivative of naïve and folk art, in a male-dominated art scene (even if artists from the Casablanca Art School, such as Mohamed Melehi and Farid Belkahia, defended her as a respectable artist). In 1966, after more than a decade of painting, Chaïbia’s career really took off when she was featured in an exhibition at the Goethe Institute in Casablanca, getting international recognition. That same year she showed her work at Galerie Solstice and the Salon des Surindépendants at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris; and over the next two decades in Denmark, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. In her dreamlike landscape of vivid colors and animated figures, which seem to be at times bursting out of the frame, and other times

Couple, 1967. Oil on canvas. 71 × 90 cm. Courtesy of MACAAL – Fondation Alliances.

dissolving, women, children, and couples, as well as weavers, worshippers, and mourners, coexist in hectic rituals and strange harmony. As fully embodied by the artist whose clothes and body painting symbolized her intimacy with the spiritual, her art also speaks about popular and esoteric signs and beliefs. Contrary to some public preconceptions, Chaïbia was not isolated from the rest of the Moroccan art scene, as she regularly featured in collective and national exhibitions; she was especially invited to create large-scale murals for the Cultural Moussem of Asilah Festival, and also joined the artists’ group invited to collaborate with the patients of the Berrechid psychiatric hospital (all beginning 1980s). Before she passed away from a heart attack, Chaïbia Talal received the Golden Medal from the Society of the French Academy of Education and Encouragement.

Morad Montazami

Femme et enfant [Woman and Child], 1974. Oil on canvas. 122 × 121 cm. Courtesy of MACAAL – Fondation Alliances.

Thania Petersen

My journey toward liberation began by tracing the migration of Sufi music – sound as memory, sound as freedom. I was drawn to this music as a living archive, a force that transcends borders, in which time dissolves and community becomes the only compass. Initially, I focused on mapping fixed routes – lines connecting the Cape to Asia and back to Africa, charting the Indian Ocean as a pathway of return. I believed that by reconstructing these historical routes, we could reunite what colonialism had severed. But after five years of deep listening and traveling to be with many Sufi groups across Asia and Africa, I began to hear differently. I realized that this music isn’t tethered to linear time. Perhaps I had been listening from the wrong perspective all along. What if this sound – this act of liberation – comes not from the past, but from the future? What if this is a future technology, calling us forward rather than backward?

We place immense weight on the past to free us, asking our ancestors to carry us, never allowing them to rest. But what if the very technologies that guided them were not of the past, but of what is yet to come?

This shift redefined everything for me. In a world that often defies reason, we must allow ourselves to think radically, even irrationally. True liberation demands that we reimagine our relationship to the sacred – to what survives and outlasts violence and oppression. For me, this is the essence of sonic liberation.

RAMPIE & LAYER, 2023. Silk embroidery thread on cotton poplin stitched onto linen. 187,9 × 170,1 cm.

WOLKE HUIL, 2025. Textile with handembroidery, appliqués and glass beads stitched onto cotton. 225 × 404 cm.

The word “dhikr” means “remembrance.” My film asks: What are we being called to remember? In its repetition and resonance lies not only memory, but a future waiting to be heard. I imagine the story of dhikr as a liberation technology sent from the future. Our children are the true custodians of time. They are not waiting for us to catch up; they are already watching us from what lies ahead. In them, we already exist, and they carry the memory of what we will become. Our children have seen this world. They know its fractures, its violence, its beauty, and its ghosts. Because they have already moved through it, they send us what we need to survive it: remembrance.

This, I believe, is dhikr. It is not only a chant or repetition. It is a frequency that unlocks. A rhythm that dismantles fear. A vibration that reminds us who we are when we strip away everything imposed on us.

I am trying to imagine what dhikr looks like. Does it look like our children – whom we haven’t met yet – guiding us back into being?

Dhikr is not history. It is prophecy. It is not a return. It is an arrival. It does not ask us to make sense – it asks us to feel. To surrender to a rhythm that comes from beyond linear time. I am reminding myself that liberation is not something we inherit. It is something we are called to remember. And in remembering, we become free.

Text provided by the artist

WAAR

Hamid Zénati

The work of the German-Algerian artist Hamid Zénati (1944-2022) is defined by a sheer endless variety of forms, patterns, and combinations of colors, materials, and techniques. His energetic compositions span textiles, ceramics, objects, and furniture, as well as performative photographs, blurring the lines between art, fashion, design, performance, and interior design. While he was known among friends and family for the T-shirts and sweaters he created for them, he largely remained unknown beyond that circle throughout his life.

As a self-taught artist with a background as a teacher, translator, and photographer, Zénati produced powerful yet playful compositions using his signature stencil technique, which he described as an “all-over” principle. This approach allowed him to incorporate various stimuli into his work. His creative process drew inspiration from the visual elements of diverse cultures, art movements, techniques, and media, which he reinterpreted in a striking manner, developing his own unique language. Music, literature, and science influenced his art, as did his fascination with the natural world, particularly plants and animals. He admired the infinite variety of forms found in nature and often watched nature films while working. His extensive collection of books about underwater worlds, insects, birds, and other natural phenomena helped shape a distinct universe that combined impressions from the natural sciences with imagined creatures.

The artist staging himself, n.d. Unknown photographer. © Hamid Zénati Estate.

Zénati grew up in Algiers during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), followed by years of political unrest that led to the Black Decade (1992-2002). He also faced precarious living conditions in Germany due to his unclear legal residency status for many years. This diasporic life – torn between two countries and existing in a state of psychological and economic limbo – was marked by both hypervisibility and invisibility, aspects that were critical to the artist’s story. Although these factors likely influenced his career, they did not diminish the vibrancy of his work, which is characterized by a relentless, anarchic drive for freedom and non-conformity. Impelled by an overwhelming creative urge, Zénati left behind more than a thousand works for posterity.

Anna Schneider

The artist never stretched his works on stretcher bars. He preferred to spontaneously lay them out in his surrounding or to stage them in photographs as performative sculptures, here in Indonesia in the 1990s. © Hamid Zénati, Hamid Zénati Estate.

Untitled [WVZ 33], n.d. Fabric paint on textile. 227 × 131 cm. Photo: Maximilian Geuter. © Hamid Zénati Estate.

Mohamed Melehi

Mohamed Melehi (1936-2020) is regarded as a major figure for postcolonial Moroccan art and within the history of modernism in the Global South. A multi-faceted artist, painter, photographer, muralist, graphic and urban designer, art teacher, and cultural activist, he taught at the Casablanca Art School during its most radical period, between 1964 and 1969.

In Melehi’s art we can sense the spirit of aesthetic revolution and the exaltation of post-Independence Morocco, through his developments in the 1960s: from experiments with abstraction in Rome and New York to the full maturation of the wave, his signature motif, in the 1970s (he took part in the Hard Edge and Geometric Painting exhibition of the MoMA, New York, in 1963).

As shown in the work Composition (1970), his colorful and pattern-making process resonates with his outdoor murals, especially those made for the Cultural Moussem of Asilah Festival (northern Morocco) from 1978 on – where Melehi co-organized a landmark tricontinental artistic network and event, a festival which continues every summer to this day.

Composition, 1970. Acrylic on panel. 120 × 100 cm. Courtesy of MACAAL –Fondation Alliances. © Melehi, Mohamed / AUTVIS, Brazil, 2025.

Melehi’s art resists the East/West divide that developed during the Cold War period. His wavy frescoes take us on a cosmopolitan journey, joining together the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. His dialogue with the West must be balanced with a passion for popular Amazigh jewelry and rugs (which can be traced all throughout the Sahara desert, either in Berber or Touareg traditions). It is a profound relationship with local art and craft, where these combinations of patterns (between straight and wavy lines, abstract and figurative forms, femininity and masculinity symbols) can be found, which is documented by Melehi’s photographic works.

Melehi has played an influential role in the development of local art pedagogy and experimental practices in Morocco.

During the 1960s, alongside Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chabâa, Toni Maraini, and Bert Flint, he participated in a turning point in art education – known as the Casablanca Art School.

As a graphic designer and photographer, Melehi helped shape the visual culture of political struggles throughout the Maghreb and Pan-Arab artistic networks. His graphic design and publishing work for the Casablanca group and avant-garde journals such as Souffles (1966-1969) and Integral (1971-1978) provide the best examples.

In 1987 Mohamed Melehi, alongside Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Kacimi, Fouad Bellamine, and Abdelkebir Rabi, represented Morocco at the 19th Bienal de São Paulo.

Morad Montazami

Edival Ramosa

Edival Ramosa’s artistic production is multifaceted, shaped by a series of journeys across both space and time. A natural wanderer, the artist’s poetic journey spans more than five decades, with a focus on his time living in Milan, Italy, from 1964 to 1974. It was during this period that his art took on a poetic form, yet its reach expanded across many other places, including Egypt, Morocco, the former Yugoslavia, the United States, Switzerland, Belgium, England, and several Brazilian cities such as Cuiabá, Cabo Frio, Ribeirão Preto, Brasília, São Paulo, and Ubatuba. His geometric thinking, particularly regarding circular and totemic sculpture, is distinctive, establishing him as an unavoidable figure within Brazil’s abstract geometric production. In Ramosa’s work, we pay attention to both the abstract elements of his poetics and his engagement with experimental production. As such, when encountering a work by the artist, we may feel as though we have seen it before in collective exhibitions of Afro-Brazilian art, yet we might also fail to fully recognize it.

Central to his work are elements such as spheres, columns, cocoons, moons, comets, arrows, and other “form-objects,” as he describes many of his pieces, each varying in color gradations and geometric forms. Works like Caboclo 7 Flechas [Caboclo 7 Arrows] (1965), Árvore multicor II –Ogum [Multicolored Tree II – Ogum] (1966), Toy para Leonardo da Vinci [Toy for Leonardo da Vinci] (1968), Estudo para o Sol [Study for the Sun] (1969), Lua [Moon] (1969), and Cometa [Comet] (1973) highlight the poetic operations developed by Ramosa, pointing toward a curious facet where non-figurative, geometric work aligns with cosmic realities.

Edival Ramosa with an untitled sculpture. Cover of the Skultura Galeria de Arte publication, São Paulo, 1985.

Abstract scenes transform into stars and planetary rings, and vice versa. In Estudo para o Sol, for example, circular lines, transparent voids, and fragmented colors evoke speculative elements: the work might be a miniature version of O Sol dos povos de cor [The Sun of the Peoples of Color] (1969), a large-scale human-sized object – a great semicircle formed by overlapping discs in a palette of yellows, oranges, reds, and purples, ton sur ton, with its diameter mirrored on an acrylic reflective base. Edival Ramosa’s geometric constellation orbits at multiple scales, both miniature and monumental, positioning the artist as a cosmic wanderer on the horizon of abstraction in Brazil.

André Pitol

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Untitled [Studies for the Sun], 2004. Acrylic glass and acrylic paint. 14 × 23 × 23 cm. moraesbarbosa Collection. Photo: Estúdio em Obra.

Studi per il Sole [Studies for the Sun], 1969. Wood and acrylic relief. 60 × 60 cm. Ronie and Conrado Mesquita Collection.

Imram Mir

The work of Imram Mir (1950-2014) presents a unique opportunity to discuss the limits of the modernist artistic and modern architectural project, which remains perplexingly central to the Brazilian experience. The trajectory that the Pakistani artist followed in the formal and discursive investigation of modernism, abstraction, and minimalism in New York, Toronto, and especially in Karachi allows us to understand an artistic practice that is not captured by the Western genealogy of art.

Mir’s entire artistic production developed as a continuous poetic research entitled Papers on Modern Art (1976-2014). Each of the twelve series created by the artist is numbered and consists of a determined set of works, whether paintings, sculptures, or installations. Over four decades, Mir dedicated himself to an in-depth and joyful experimentation around abstract language through geometric forms. The very idea embedded in the project’s format corresponds to a sense of unfolding over time, a process to materialize into something new.

In Ninth Paper on Modern Art (1997), for example, we gain insight into the many studies by the artist with spheres, orbits, pyramids, and other forms he employed in his works.

In Twelfth Paper on Modern Art (2014), the last series he completed, we encounter the largest sculptural pieces. The scale of his art redefines geometric forms in new kinetic discoveries, often involving elements that repeat in a series, such as metal spheres in space or a large fiberglass globe. The papers are not final versions, as one element leads to the next visual reflection of his abstract imagination. Curator Amal Alhaag pointed out how “Imran Mir engaged with Western artists while deliberately, or not, attempting

Untitled (Twelfth Paper on Modern Art series), 2013. Acrylic on canvas. 91,5 × 91,5 cm. Courtesy of the Irman Mir Art Foundation.

to expand the shutters of modernism and abstraction. The provocation lies, perhaps, in how one can deconstruct and liberate artistic concepts from the oppressive grip of the West and its canonical approach to art and world-making.”1 In our case, then, it lies in how the large, colorful designs of Mir’s pieces can rub against Niemeyer’s white Pavilion, relating submerged colonial historical contexts, where “color is the master of the ceremony in which the lines form a chorus.”2

André Pitol

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

1. Amal Alhaag, “A Note: Navigating Imran Mir’s Cosmos,” in Imran Mir – A World that Is Not Entirely Reflective but Contemplative. Berlin: Archive Books, 2022, p.22. 2. Ibid., p.23

Untitled (Eleventh Paper on Modern Art series), 1996. Acrylic on canvas. 106 × 304 cm. Courtesy of the Irman Mir Art Foundation.

Untitled (Ninth Paper on Modern Art series), 2000. Acrylic on canvas. 122 × 122 cm. Courtesy of the Irman Mir Art Foundation.

Hessie

Hessie’s (1933-2017) artistic practice has redefined the boundaries between embroidery and collage. She mainly worked with very simple materials, such as cotton fabrics or used packaging materials of all kinds. Overtly minimalist and abstract, they were transformed into striking, vivid, and animated geometric compositions, exemplifying a unique poetic language developed over time. With a large body of work divided into various series such as Boutons [Buttons] (1974-1975), Trous [Holes] (1973), Végétations [Vegetations] (1970s), and Déchets collages [Waste Collage] (1976), just to name a few, Hessie’s ability to transform domestic techniques into powerful artistic expressions made her a pioneering feminist figure, who challenged the idea that female ascribed activities such as sewing or embroidery were just simplistic or old-fashioned.

Nr. 018 from the series papiers [Papers], 1970. Collage of perforated newspaper on white paper. 50 × 65 cm. Photo: Béatrice Hatala. Courtesy of the artist’s estate and Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre, Paris.

As a self-taught artist, she was inspired by everyday life and materials such as buttons, paper scraps, threads, or salvaged objects, challenging conventional notions and understandings of arts and/or crafts. In certain cases, the boundaries between art and science were blurred. For instance, in the series Végétations, whose title is a clear and direct reference to plants, the artist’s works appear full of life through the repetitiveness of the red or white threads, reminiscing the microscopic observation of cells, which, as defined by human biologists, are the smallest common denominator of life, responsible for all functional aspects of an organism.

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program

Beyond the harmony or formal beauty of her textile pieces, Hessie’s works also highlight the profound potential of textiles as a medium for social and artistic commentary. Due to the tactile intimacy of fabric, each piece carries personal and collective narratives, offering a deeply humane and subversive voice that addresses societal issues such as labor and gender through a familiar medium. Furthermore, the slow, deliberate process of stitching, sewing, and perforating contrasts with the idea of mass production, displaying the artist’s conscious approach to sustainable practices. The aspect of time and its passing as well as her life conditions also left their mark on the works, for example in the form of traces of rust and water, which were due to the precarious storage conditions in her house, a lighthouse in the French countryside where she lived most of her adult life.

Billy Fowo

Nr. 241 from the series points cousus [Sewn Stitches], 1975. Embroidery with thread on cotton fabric. 57 × 139 cm. Photo: Béatrice Hatal. Courtesy of the artist’s estate and Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre, Paris.

Gōzō Yoshimasu

Gōzō Yoshimasu has been at the forefront of Japanese poetry for over six decades. Experimenting with words, type, and punctuation, and incorporating fragments of foreign tongues and found texts, his poems celebrate the riotous multiplicity of language. At the same time, Yoshimasu imbues his compositions with a transcendent urgency as he reports on his physical and intellectual journeys. In “Princess Weaver,” for example, a visit to a mining town in northern Japan occasions the following observation: “Long ago, standing in the smell of several hundred tons of lime, blue flowers, shellfish too fossils of fish too, the Aoume Line went down the mountain bit by bit.”1

Yoshimasu’s creative practice extends beyond the printed page to performances, photography, moving images, and sound recordings. In his performances, Yoshimasu reinterprets his poems through vocalizations, bodily gestures, chance operations – such as wearing bells suspended from his teeth with string – and collaborations with other artists. In 2006 he began making videos with a handheld digital camera. The videos typically feature Yoshimasu’s excited meditations on art and life in response to locations ranging from the Watts Towers in Los Angeles to the US military’s

New Dear Monster, 2022. Mixed media on paper. 51 × 45,5 cm. Photo: Kei Okano © Gōzō Yoshimasu. Courtesy of Take Ninagawa, Tokyo.

Dear Monster. 2014. Mixed media on paper. 44,5 × 41,5 cm. Photo: Kei Okano. © Gōzō Yoshimasu. Courtesy of Take Ninagawa, Tokyo.

Yokota Air Base near his childhood home in Tokyo. Many of his works move fluidly between different states, as with his copper plates and scrolls inscribed with words and other motifs, which become both scores and instruments in his performances.

In recent years, Yoshimasu was profoundly affected by the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident of March 11, 2011. The catastrophe inspired the mixed-media project Dear Monster (2012-2016) – presented at the 36th Bienal – comprising over 600 manuscripts of handwritten text, drawings, marks, and collaged elements. The bulk of the work is dedicated to transcriptions of writings by the postwar-era poet and thinker Takaaki Yoshimoto, a mentor of Yoshimasu’s, who died in March 2012. Manifesting the “poetic obligation” of a survivor, Yoshimasu’s transcriptions recall the devotional act of copying out Buddhist sutras while also suggesting a translation or renewal of the source text. Yet much of the underlying text is rendered illegible by quasi-calligraphic splashes of vibrantly colored paint, which manifest the explosive convergence of creation and destruction, remembering and forgetting – in a word, overwriting – inherent to text itself. Dear Monster has, in turn, led to subsequent projects Fire Embroidery (2016-2018), New Dear Monster (2016-2022), and Voix (2019-2020).

Andrew Maerkle

1. Gōzō Yoshimasu, “Princess Weaver.” Bomb, n.16, Summer 1986, p.73. Available at: <bombmagazine.org/articles/1986/07/01/four-poems-yoshimasu>. Access: 2025.

This participation is supported by: National Center for Art Research, Japan

Firelei Báez

Firelei Báez is an acclaimed visual artist whose complex and deeply layered practice critically engages with diasporic histories, intersectional identities, and cultural memory. Through her distinctive use of painting, drawing, and large-scale installations, Báez interrogates historical narratives and visual representations, particularly focusing on overlooked or marginalized histories related to Afro-Caribbean and Afro-diasporic experiences.

,

and

Balangandan (Planisphere 1587)

2025. Oil

acrylic on archival printed canvas with attached azabache pendants. 254 × 250,2 cm.

Photo: Elisabeth Bernstein. © Firelei Báez. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Báez’s work frequently incorporates archival research and iconography, blending historical documents, maps, mythological symbolism, and elements derived from Afro-Indigenous folklore and popular culture. Báez’s portraits fuse visual elements drawn from local mythologies and rituals with imagery from science fiction and fantasy, presenting identities as fluid and inherited narratives as continually transforming. This approach enables her to critique colonialism, migration, and racial identity, challenging conventional narratives through vibrant, visually compelling interventions. Her artistic vocabulary is notably informed by textile traditions, body ornamentation, and the natural world, which she transforms into potent symbols of resilience, hybridity, and cultural resistance. One significant dimension of Báez’s practice is her use of vibrant chromatic schemes and intricate layering techniques, which visually manifest the complexities and fluidities of cultural identity. Her paintings often blur the boundaries between figuration and abstraction, evoking multiple layers of meaning that demand active viewer engagement. This aesthetic strategy facilitates a reconsideration of dominant historical narratives, allowing marginalized perspectives to emerge and flourish. By situating Afro-diasporic narratives within broader global contexts, Báez not only recovers suppressed histories but also actively reconfigures contemporary understandings of cultural hybridity and collective memory.

Naiomy Guerrero

Farid Belkahia

Painter and sculptor Farid Belkahia (1934-2014) was the director of the Casablanca Art School from 1962 to 1974, a pioneer of Moroccan and African modern art, and a major figure for Global South studies and postcolonial art history. After he travelled the world – from Paris, where he studied at École nationale des Beaux Arts, to Prague, where he met with communist artists such as Pablo Neruda and Paul Éluard – his work took a radical turn by the mid-1960s. He then concentrated his efforts on debunking the Western painting apparatus, resorting instead to copper, animal skin, or shaped and decorated frames. His work combines influences of Arabic calligraphy, Amazigh alphabet, and archetypal and multicultural geometries. In his “shaped canvas” technique, he uses animal skin instead of canvas and henna dye instead of oil paint. Belkahia’s deep connection to Amazigh and African popular arts resonates in his statement: “Tradition is the future of Man.”1

The profoundness of his visual, symbolic, and semantic research and exploration leads us to see his work as a kind of either esoteric or talismanic modernism – an art of transcribing ancient or sacred languages and pictograms (with a specific role for Sufi-related elements) into a new modernized and somehow Pan-African system of signs in migration (in which the influence of Paul Klee and the Bauhaus can still be deciphered).

The work Composition (1996), presented in the Bienal, can be related to different cycles of Belkahia’s shaped canvas or relief paintings, blending anthropomorphic and abstract forms, such as Féminité [Femininity] (1980), Transe [Trance] (1986), Procession (1996), or Main [Hand] (1980). As one can see, his language of signs and symbols takes on quite erotic and sexual connotations and shapes, as a great number of his skin paintings, undergoing a striking process of eroticized abstraction and emancipation of a transsexual body through the artwork.

After two years as a very young Casablanca Art School director, Belkahia expanded his vision: between 1964 and 1965 he appointed Mohamed Melehi and Mohammed Chabâa as visual arts professors, alongside Toni Maraini and Bert Flint for art history courses. Together they led the most compelling pedagogic revolution in Morocco’s post-independence era, known as the Casablanca Art School, receiving wide attention in the field of postcolonial art history and in global museums nowadays. In 1987 Farid Belkahia, alongside Mohamed Melehi, Mohammed Kacimi, Fouad Bellamine, and Abdelkebir Rabi, represented Morocco at the 19th Bienal de São Paulo.

Morad Montazami

Composition, c. 1980. Pigments on hide. 159,5 × 157 cm. Courtesy of MACAAL – Fondation Alliances. © Belkahia, Farid/ AUTVIS, Brazil, 2025.

1. Rajae Benchemsi (ed.), Farid Belkahia. Milan: Skira, 2014.

Madiha Umar

Madiha Umar (1908-2005) was a pioneering Iraqi artist whose innovative fusion of Arabic calligraphy and abstract art established her as a foundational figure in modern Arab art. Born in Aleppo, Syria, to a Circassian father and a Syrian mother, Umar relocated to Iraq during her childhood, where she later became a naturalized citizen. Her early education took place at the Sultaniyya School in Istanbul, followed by studies at the Maria Grey Training College in London, from which she graduated with firstclass honors in arts and crafts in 1933. This accomplishment marked her as the first woman to receive an Iraqi government scholarship for art studies abroad. Upon returning to Baghdad, Umar assumed the role of head of the painting department at the Teachers Training College for Women, a position she held until 1942. That year, she moved to Washington, DC, and continued her artistic education at George Washington University and later at the Corcoran School of Art, earning a degree in 1959. Umar’s exposure to the work of Islamic scholar Nabia Abbott during her time in Washington ignited her interest in the aesthetic potential of Arabic script. Between 1942 and 1944, she began exploring the integration of Arabic

The Waste Land, 1960. Oil on canvas. 61 × 117 cm.

Courtesy of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.

calligraphy into abstract compositions, a groundbreaking endeavor that positioned her as a precursor to the Hurufiyya movement – a mid-20th-century art movement wherein artists incorporated Arabic letters into modern artistic expressions.

In 1949, with encouragement from art historian Richard Ettinghausen, Umar held a solo exhibition in Washington, DC, showcasing 22 abstract works centered around Arabic lettering rendered in organic forms. This exhibition was accompanied by an essay wherein she articulated the dynamic character of Arabic letters as standalone abstract designs. Umar’s artistic philosophy was further evidenced in her participation in the 1952 Ibn Sina exhibition at the Baghdad Art Institute, where she presented 48 paintings integrating Arabic letters into modern, secular artworks. This exhibition significantly influenced Middle Eastern artists and underscored her role as a pioneer of the Hurufiyya movement.

In 1971, Umar co-founded the One Dimension Group alongside artists Shakir Hassan Al Said, Jamil Hamoudi, and Rafa Nasiri. The group’s manifesto deliberated on approaching abstraction in visual arts through the lens of local Arabic scripts, aiming to infuse authenticity into the form of the letter without merely reviving traditional Islamic calligraphy. Umar’s oeuvre is characterized by the transformation of Arabic letters into abstract compositions, reflecting her deep engagement with cultural heritage and modern artistic practices. Madiha Umar’s legacy endures through her innovative synthesis of calligraphy and abstraction, which has profoundly influenced subsequent generations of artists exploring the intersection of cultural identity and contemporary art forms.

Naiomy Guerrero

Untitled, 1978. Watercolor on paper. 31 × 44 cm. Courtesy of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.

Ernest Mancoba

“For me, art can only be founded on the single notion – of which it is both the confirmation and the proof – that Man is One,” Ernest Mancoba (1904-2002) said in an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist.1 Born in South Africa, Mancoba was a pioneer of avant-garde gestural movements and a father of African modernism, recognized for his playful gestural marks and abstract compositions. His early career was riddled by controversy, after he was both celebrated and derided for his work Bantu Madonna (1928), a sculpture of the Virgin Mary with African phenotypes rendered in traditional African yellowwood. Facing the limitations of Apartheid South Africa, Mancoba fled to Europe in 1938. However, he soon found himself arrested by the Nazis in Paris, and was placed in a German prisoner war camp. Once released two years later, he began to experiment with painting.

In 1940, he created Composition, in which he takes a word from European formalism and creates from it a gestural representation of an African mask. This painting marked his departure from figuration, one that would birth decades of experimentation and innovation with line, figure, and form. His canvases featured rhythmic compositions and spontaneous, expressive forms that reflected his refusal to fit neatly into a definition of an African artist, particularly at a time when European and South African artists and curators were openly naming the South African movements of the mid-twentieth century “African Primitivism,” despite the movement’s clear engagement with modernism. Aiming to form a more independent identity, Mancoba established himself as an avant-garde abstractionist, engaging with multiple artistic movements throughout the

Untitled, n.d. Oil on canvas. 56 × 45 cm. Courtesy of the Estate of Ferlov Mancoba.

20th century, while mostly being overlooked as a leader of them. Often the only African artist in the collectives he was part of, Mancoba was determined to establish his own personal freedom and unique identity – not just as an African artist, but as an avant-garde artist in Europe. Championing a style in which gestural marks are spread playfully across bare linen canvases, Mancoba resisted identifiable figures and forms, yearning instead to create a body of work that reflected a longing for “the thing that goes beyond us and which we do not understand,” as he noted in a 1995 interview. His paintings, like many of his travels, reflected a deeply aspirational relationship with his own self-definition. Mancoba’s art was at once universal and deeply personal – it was a declaration of the South African artist’s own personal intellectual freedom and identity.

Margarita Lila

This participation is supported by:

its IF Incontournable program

Rosa

Untitled, 1993. Ink and oil pastel on paper. 32 × 50 cm. Courtesy of the Estate of Ferlov Mancoba.

Untitled, 1990. Ink and oil pastel on paper. 41,7 × 59 cm. Courtesy of the Estate of Ferlov Mancoba.

Institut français, within

1. Hans Ulrich Obrist, Interviews, Volume 1. Milan: Charta, 2003, p.572.

Moisés Patrício

Moisés Patrício operates at the crossroads. Like Eshu, his work moves between times, spaces, and materialities. The orisha, associated with communication and language, governs the artist, alongside the principles of Candomblé, in both life and art. Patrício appropriates established languages in contemporary art to propose a dialogical reparation: to occupy the traditionally white circuit, bringing the Afro-Brazilian worldview to the center of the discussion. He defines this operation as his “Eshuistic place of action,”1 a field of displacement and re-signification in which the hegemonic discourse is challenged by ancestral knowledge. In the Brasilidades [Brazilianness] series (2020-2022), this confrontation takes the form of hybrid sculptures, in which cement cubes, reminiscent of brutalist construction logic, engulf liturgical ceramic objects from Candomblé, such as alguidares, quartinhas, and clay vessels. Cement, the material of modern architecture and exclusionary urban planning, imprisons and fossilizes the vessels, which, largely made by hand, carry within them the circularity of form and time, the transmission of knowledge, and the life in a circle. The encounter between opposites – the square and the circle, the hard and the malleable, the straight and the curvilinear – exposes the erasure of the symbolic marks of Afro-Brazilian cultures in shaping the nation’s imagination.

Cruza-Trilha, 2023. Exhibition view at Verve Galeria, São Paulo.

In metaphysics, impenetrability is the quality of matter that prevents two bodies from occupying the same space at the same time. In Brasilidades, this condition takes on a political dimension: the objects embedded in cement speak of the struggle for territory, the violence of colonization, and the erasure of symbols of Black culture in public space. Spatial control, whether in modern urbanism or the organization of space in art, is a strategy of domination. Against this, Patrício affirms permanence – the body that resists and insists on existing.

The artist’s work transforms three-dimensional space into territory, into a field of questioning, as forms, materials, and meanings confront one another. Brasilidades does not seek synthesis or harmony but exposes the fractures and contradictions that shape Brazilian identity. Between the circle and the square, between ancestral Afrodiasporic tradition and colonial imposition, Moisés Patrício forces us to confront the uncomfortable question: what is Brazilian identity, and who has the right to define it?

Érica Burini

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

1. Phrase by the artist for the series Cada voz [Each Voice] (2021), a project by Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural. Available at: <youtu.be/7Q-da6pJC6A?si=r1lJegnrCmlivimk>. Access: 2025.

Brasilidades [Brazilianness] series, 2019. Concrete and ceramic. 30 × 62 × 40 cm.

I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih (Murni)

Born in Tabanan, Bali, the Balinese/Indonesian artist Murni (1966-2006) lately reached international recognition. She was trained in painting with the artist I Dewa Putu Mokoh, based on local tradition. Coming originally from Pengosekan village, located near Ubud in Bali, this visual art of storytelling is based on ancient narratives – from sacred Hindu and Buddhist texts to old Balinese and Javanese folklore. Pengosekan paintings are characterized by their use of vibrant colors and abundant compositions, condensing daily life scenes, fauna and flora ornamentation, and mythological divinities.

The way Murni first adopted the codes of Pengosekan painting to better emancipate from it, progressively subverting the tradition into her own personal style from the early 1990s – with a minimalistic and also humorous and ironic twist – is remarkable. Especially given how she became a prominent figure in Balinese/Indonesian art; all the more so as a woman who made herself through an independent path. From 1995 onwards, she participated in

Suatu Upacara Tradisional [A Traditional Ceremony], 2002. Acrylic on canvas. 70 × 70 cm.

Courtesy of the Estate of I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih & Gajah Gallery, Singapore.

numerous group exhibitions in Indonesia and internationally (Australia, Italy, Hong Kong…), thus revealing stunning compositions dealing with female identity, experience, and traumas, fighting against a lot of taboos in a patriarchal society. Indeed Murni’s intimate suffering must not be ignored when confronted with her seemingly erotic and, even to some extent, sadomasochist figures – at least her very explicit sexual imagery –, as she was victim of rape by her own father when she was nine years old. While often misinterpreted as an outsider or “naïve” art, her very blunt sexual symbolism (assembling together phallus, vagina, and orifices in extravagant and multiple combinations), oversaturated and sometimes with glossy colors, proves to be a space of subjective exorcism and resilience, to overcome the trauma of the past and claim for the right to existence in spite of the intimate suffering. The objects she might introduce in her paintings, often seen as threats to the integrity of the distorted bodies, such as scissors, high heels, etc., also come into play as tools of transformation and empowerment. Challenging the role and position of women in the Asian art context, Murni made her works not only a personal battle and therapy but also a fearless feminist path for the new generation of Balinese artists following her, such as Imhathai Suwatthanasilp, Citra Sasmita, among others.

Morad Montazami

Aman Tanpa Kuatir [Safe and Unworried], 2004. Acrylic on canvas. 170 × 110 cm. Courtesy of the Estate of I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih & Gajah Gallery, Singapore.

Story of Phenomphen, 2003. Acrylic on canvas. 60,5 × 89 × 1,5 cm. Courtesy of the Estate of I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih & Gajah Gallery, Singapore.

Behjat Sadr

One of Iran’s most influential and radical visual artists, Behjat Sadr (1924-2009) was one of the first Iranian women artists and professors to develop on an international scale. In 1962, she not only represented Iran at the Bienal de São Paulo but also exhibited at the Tehran Biennale, the Biennale di Venezia, and the Minneapolis Art Institute. In 1955, after studying in Tehran, she went to Italy to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Leaving academic frames and practice behind, she began to use synthetic industrial paint and to work on the ground. Her “informal abstraction,” as shown in Untitled (1956), unveils her expressionist rage with an irrepressible desire to tackle the depth of the painting; the void or the spirals in which the artist can dwell existentially – with a clear tendency for the color black.

c.

c.

Untitled,

1987. Oil on paper and photo collage. 50 × 65 cm. Courtesy of the Behjat Sadr Endowment Fund.

Untitled,

1974. Oil on aluminium. 61 × 102 cm. Courtesy of the Behjat Sadr Endowment Fund.

Untitled, c. 1987. Oil on paper and photo collage. 50 × 65 cm. Courtesy of the Behjat Sadr Endowment Fund.

A certain sense of melancholia through exile ties her friendship with significant Iranian poets such as Sohrab Sepehri and Forough Farrokhzad. See the drawing of Farrokhzad’s corpse from 1967, the year of the tragic death of the famous woman poet who introduced Sadr to modern poetry. Sadr also collaborated with influential Italian and French art critics (Giulio Carlo Argan, Roberto Melli, Pierre Restany, Michel Ragon…).

The year 1967 marks Sadr’s enthusiastic experiment with geometric abstraction, Kinetic, and Op Art. As seen in Untitled (1967), she created a unique innovation and optical device: she applied aluminium foil to venetian blinds and then superimposed them vertically onto painted canvas or wood. This mirroring effect, multiplying the painterly patterns, creates a kaleidoscopic image – as a way of welcoming the spectator physically into the work.

In the 1970s, Sadr’s works go beyond strictly geometric strategies. They expand to the hallucinatory visions produced by the effect of black paint on aluminum canvas (as seen in Untitled [1974]), where the paint almost looks like petrol. Hence providing unexpected reflections and mirror effects, these works (such as Untitled [1977]) highlight Sadr’s dazzling power to multiply the lines organically and graphically, in her post-calligraphic vortex. In the 1980s, while Sadr spent most of her time in Paris, France, her practice focused on a series of collages – or, as she called them, “photo-paintings.” Such return to figurative landscape seems to be a compelling puzzle of her “cut-out” memories and belongings, through her walks and photographs – but also a space of resilience and meditation after exile and the loss of one’s homeland.

Morad Montazami

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program

Forugh Farrokhzad

A tempest of raw emotion and unflinching truth, Forugh Farrokhzad’s (1934-1967) poetry has become a luminous force in 20th-century literature. Her work shattered the confines of classical Persian poetry, casting aside traditional structures to speak in free verse, laying bare the intimate landscapes of love, longing, and liberation.

Her poems are windows into her soul, intimate and confessional, unfolding layers of vulnerability, yearning, and quiet disillusionment. Farrokhzad offers a bold portrait of a feminine experience many have faced and perhaps still do, both its aching beauty and its silent pain. Her words pulse with sensitivity and defiance. This bare and unguarded honesty, both a strength and a fragility, set her apart, challenging the conventions of her time.

Farrokhzad’s style is marked by vivid, sometimes unsettling, imagery that communicates her emotional turmoil and existential questions. Often venturing into surreal, almost dreamlike panoramas, in which the boundary between the isolated containment and imagined freedom becomes fluid, her work mirrors the ebbs and flows of her inner mind unapologetically grasping at the edges of human existence.

Through works like Another Birth (1964) and The Captive (1955), Farrokhzad explored themes of confinement – both seen and unseen – delving into the emotional and societal chains that have binded women (in Iran and elsewhere, then and now). Her poems became an anthem for freedom, a cry for release from personal struggle and the weight of cultural and societal oppression. Her fierce and tender language intertwines the stark and the lyrical, creating a tension that lingers long after the final line.

Despite her sudden passing at the age of 32, Farrokhzad’s legacy ripples far beyond the borders of Iranian literature. Her poetry remains a beacon of resistance, authenticity, and empowerment. Her words, once considered poetry of protest, continue to speak to the struggles and triumphs of those who dare to challenge our existing conditions, making her work not just relevant but essential in today’s conversations around gender, sexuality, freedom, and social

justice. Her voice continues to ignite feminist movements and inspire poets across the world. Her poetry and films are a testament to the unspoken power of words and the courage it takes to challenge silence, rise above society’s constraints, and embrace the complex depths of human existence. Through her work she invites us to reckon with the heart’s desires and the soul’s quest for self-expression.

Deliasofia Zacarias

The House Is Black, 1963. Video stills. Black-and-white video, sound; 22’. Courtesy: Filmicca.

Nzante Spee

Known primarily for his works on canvas, Nzante Spee (1953-2005) was an artist whose practice was deeply rooted in the political urgencies of human and other-than-human conditions. Hailing from his native Northwest region in Cameroon, Spee narrated stories through his dynamic use of colors, bold compositions, and complex symbolisms, often depicted against a surrealistic background in which human bodies, plants, geometric forms, and patterns are fragmented, abstracted, reconfigured and transformed into something new. Throughout his artistic journey, Spee conjugated several universes alongside each other and developed a unique visual language he named the Melting Age. The term could be understood as a reference to how several worlds get into contact with each other, and the ability time has to bear witness to the resulting and multiple ways of inhabiting these worlds.

Presented in the 36th Bienal de São Paulo are works produced in the last decade of the 20th century, using acrylic or oil on canvas, with themes such as ecology, nature, and music predominantly recurring. In pieces such as The Woodcutter – The Destruction of our Environment Gently Destroys Us Like Every Cigarette We Smoke (1995), The Wahdoosee Question (1994), David and Goliath (1995), and

The Cora Player, 2004. Oil on canvas. 61 × 45 cm. Courtesy of Aloysius Forsuh Tih.

Hands of the Forest, 2004. Oil on canvas. 51 × 70 cm. Courtesy of Aloysius Forsuh Tih.

Le Paradis des antilopes [The Paradise of the Antelopes] (1994), the artist draws our attention to the complexified relationship between humanity and nature, and to the impact nefarious human actions such as deforestation have on the environment and consequently on all living beings. Other works such as Echoes of Music (1994), Music Trio Band (1995), and The Drummer and the Dancers (1995) bear testimony to Spee’s passion for music. Realized in his characteristic signature style of symbolist and surrealist abstraction, the scenes depicted on these canvases reminisce about the night sessions in the local spots such as bars, nightclubs, or “circuits,” as they are commonly called in Pidgin English. It is an acknowledgment of these spaces as important vectors and components that form the fabric of various societies, hence hinting at the artist’s desire to reconcile art with various aspects of life, because “Art is life… politics is art, money is art, and lots of other things. Even witchcraft is art,” as Nzante Spee asserted.

Billy Fowo

Money Blues, 2004. Oil on canvas. 60 × 88 cm.

Courtesy of Aloysius Forsuh Tih.

Huguette Caland

To understand Huguette Caland’s (1931-2019) work is to delve into the themes of identity, feminism, and the body, intertwined with the cultural richness of her Eastern heritage and the boldness of Western modernism. Transcending her political and personal background, Caland’s interdisciplinary artistry is one of innovation, where abstraction and figuration dance together, merging fluidity with form to celebrate sensuality, desire, and intimate self-expression. Caland’s early work, shaped by the figurative traditions of the 1950s and 1960s in Lebanon, studied the human form, especially the female body. These early pieces, rich in emotion and sensuality, gave way to a more abstract language in the 1970s, after she moved to Paris and then Los Angeles in the late 1980s. From then on, her art embraced organic, curvilinear forms that evoked the body, represented either more or less explicitly, such as in Parenthèse I [Parenthesis I] (1971) and Bribes de corpes [Fragments of Bodies] (1973).

In her work, abstraction is seen as a vessel for the physical, capturing its essence without ever succumbing to the literal. Central to Caland’s vision was her exploration of the feminine. Yet, her works never simply represented women; they embodied a liberated, unapologetic sense of womanhood. Through sweeping lines and vibrant colors, Caland

Homage to Pubic Hair, 1992. Mixed media on paper over panel. 12,7 × 25,4 cm. Courtesy of Studio Huguette Caland.

Parenthèse I [Parenthesis I], 1971. Ink on paper. 19 × 24.1 cm. Courtesy of Studio Huguette Caland.

, 1985. Oil on linen. 45,7 × 61 cm.

painted not just the body but the very essence of desire, vulnerability, and strength. In Homage to Pubic Hair (1992), Caland uses a pencil line to contour the female form, particularly the labia, with playful pubic twirls washed in warm colors. She once said, “The line is beautiful… I’m a line person.”1 Throughout her career, the line has woven its way through every corner of Caland’s practice, meandering across fragile drawings and flowing over paintings on linen, canvas, and panel – an art technique of an uninterrupted journey, where the pencil moves from the top of the page to its very end, leaving a trace of continuity in its wake. Her use of abstraction was not just an artistic choice, but a way of distilling the essence of human experience, capturing both her subjects’ physicality and emotional depth.

The 36th Bienal de São Paulo brings together a selection of Huguette Caland’s legacy that beckons viewers to connect on an emotional and imaginative level with the lines and shapes she has conjured. This delicate balance between suggestion and form has imbued her art with a timeless resonance. Each work traces the whispers of the most intimate moments viewers can relate to.

Deliasofia Zacarias

1. Myrna Ayad, “Huguette Caland: A Life in Lines, Love, and Liberation”. Art|Basel, Feb. 13, 2025. Available at: <https://www.artbasel.com/stories/huguette-caland-lebanese-madridmuseo-reina-sofia>. Access: 2025.

This participation is supported by: Institut français, within its IF Incontournable program

Desert

Courtesy of Studio Huguette Caland.

Frankétienne

Untitled, 2001. Mixed media on high-density wood fiberboard. 61 × 40,6 cm. Photo: Madeline El-Saieh. Courtesy of Central Fine, Miami; and El-Saieh Gallery, Port-au-Prince.

Frankétienne (1936-2025), born Jean-Pierre Basilic Dantor Franck Étienne d’Argent, was an influential multidisciplinary Haitian artist whose extensive oeuvre encompassed literature, theater, music, and particularly painting. Although predominantly recognized for his literary achievements, Frankétienne’s paintings constitute a critical dimension of his creative expression, vividly encapsulating the complexity, resilience, and cultural identity of Haiti through abstract aesthetics and thematic intensity. Initiating his artistic practice in painting in 1973, Frankétienne’s visual art emerged as a complementary articulation of themes explored within his literary works. His inaugural exhibition in Port-au-Prince in 1974 signified the inception of an extensive and impactful artistic trajectory. Over subsequent decades, he produced approximately one thousand paintings, each distinguished by dynamic forms and a vibrant chromatic spectrum prominently featuring reds and blues, intentionally evoking the symbolic resonance of the Haitian national flag. These colors serve as allegorical references to national identity, historical complexities, sociopolitical struggles, intimacy, and the human body.

A seminal work in Frankétienne’s visual catalog is Désastre (12 janvier 2010) [Disaster (January 12, 2010)] (2010), an acrylic composition executed in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti. This painting articulates the profound emotional and physical devastation experienced by the victims, employing swirling forms and dense, layered brushwork to visually manifest themes of chaos, tragedy, and collective mourning. Its

public exhibition in 2014 provided an essential platform for collective memory and cathartic reflection. This work exemplifies Frankétienne’s consistent thematic focus on resilience and the enduring capacity for recovery inherent within Haitian society.

Frankétienne’s visual practice is closely aligned with Spiralism, a literary and artistic movement he co-founded, characterized by non-linear narratives and thematic complexity. His paintings serve as visual representations of these spiralistic principles, encapsulating both the particularity of the Haitian experience and broader universal themes of human struggle and perseverance. Throughout his prolific career, Frankétienne attained international recognition, notably receiving the UNESCO Artist for Peace designation in 2010 for his efforts to promote Haitian culture on a global scale. His enduring legacy remains profoundly influential, situated at the intersection of cultural advocacy and artistic innovation, firmly positioning his work within a broader academic discourse on Caribbean art and post-colonial identity.

Naiomy

Guerrero

Acrobatie [Acrobatics], 2023. Mixed media on board. 27,9 × 36,8 cm. Photo: Madeline El-Saieh. Courtesy of Central Fine, Miami; and El-Saieh Gallery, Port-au-Prince.

Amour fatal [Fatal Love], 2024. Mixed media on canvas. 50,8 × 76,2 cm. Photo: Madeline El-Saieh. Courtesy of Central Fine, Miami; and El-Saieh Gallery, Port-au-Prince.

Heitor dos Prazeres

Soro da juventude [Youth Serum], n.d. Ink on paper music score. 37 × 23 cm. Rafael Moraes Collection.

Photo: Ricardo Miyada.

At the crossroads of visual arts, samba, fashion, and macumba, Heitor dos Prazeres (1898-1966) was present in the streets of Rio de Janeiro’s “Little Africa” and around XI Square during the first half of the 20th century until his death in 1966. A multifaceted artist, he worked in figurative painting, composed samba songs and terreiro chants, and also designed costumes for shows and performances, such as the Ballet do IV Centenário de São Paulo, in 1954.1 Festivities. Samba circles. Bar tables. Neighborhood games. Daily life. His works invite us to gaze upon the vibrant life of the Black population in Rio de Janeiro at the time, both in rural contexts and urban centers. Using oil and gouache on canvas, the artist depicts the presence of Black people in various daily situations, combining a diverse color palette with well-defined lines full of movement. “Mano Heitor” [brother Heitor], as he was sometimes called, created images of great symbolism and expressive power.

A born composer of samba lyrics and Carnival marches, Heitor was also involved in the founding of iconic Rio de Janeiro samba schools such as Estácio de Sá, Mangueira, and Portela. He used his intellectual knowledge of music to develop a unique visual identity in his paintings. The energetic gestures present in his work, like the figures depicted with their heads held high and in colorful garments, enabled him to showcase three pieces at the 1st Bienal de São Paulo in 1951.

O gaitista [The Harmonica Player], 1950s. Oil on canvas. 46 × 38.3 cm. Almeida & Dale Galeria de Arte Collection. Photo: Fábio Souza.

“My painting is about things that passed through me, and I passed through them,” Heitor dos Prazeres declared. Through well-defined brushstrokes, the artist affirms the Black experience in its fullness of life. His sensitivity to his surroundings made him a key agent in Afro-diasporic art. His painting breaks away from the archive of slavery, challenging the colonial iconography created about Black people, whether by 19th-century European artists or by modernist painters in the Brazilian post-abolition period, after 1888.

From a radical Black perspective, Heitor dos Prazeres’s artistic and musical works project an art that was not circumscribed by coloniality and other racial exclusion norms. In dialogue with writer Saidiya Hartman, we understand that the artist narrates a counter-History, an endeavor that “has always been inseparable from writing a history of present.”2 In his time, Heitor was a multi-artist who anticipated the debates of our contemporary world, critically reflecting on the past and imagining the future.

Guilherme Fernandes

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

1. The artist designed the set and costumes for the performance O guarda-chuva [The Umbrella].

2. Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe, v.12, n.2, pp. 1-14, June 2008.

Untitled 1958. Oil on canvas. 72 × 83 cm. Lêo Pedrosa Collection. Photo: Jaime Acioli. Courtesy of MT Projetos de Arte.

Adama Delphine Fawundu

Adama Delphine Fawundu’s work is driven by the vibration of continuities. Her gesture does not start from a fixed point, but from a trail that insists on crossing. Body, earth, and sound are not separated; they move in reciprocity. The artist inscribes herself in this current, dealing with the legacy as a field of forces – not a static archive, but a grammar of trajectories. At the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, she presents an immersive installation that interweaves video, rhythm, and textile materials, creating a circular territory where time is not fixed but spirals within a pulsating, ever-changing fabric.

Fawundu operates from the Lukasa and the Dikenga, symbolic devices of the Luba and Kongo peoples. The Lukasa, a sophisticated memory support, not only preserves stories but also reactivates them through its textures and reliefs. The Dikenga, a Bakongo cosmogram, expresses the cyclicality of existence, in which matter and flow do not follow Western linearity, but fold and unfold. Beatriz Nascimento reminds us that the permanence of Black worlds is marked by the invention of new territorialities – places where experience is a horizon in continuous recomposition.

Klin wata no boku, duya, I du so!, 2024. Water sachets (Sierra Leone), textiles, shells (South Carolina and Maine, USA; Cuba), cyanotype paper, Mardi Gras beads, raffia, Spanish moss, healing herbs (Mali), Carolina Gold Rice (South Carolina). 457 × 203 cm. Photo: Jenny Gorman. Courtesy of the artist and Hesse Flatow, New York.

Fawundu’s textile collages, meditations on our past, present, and future, are constructed with materials manipulated by communities in Congo, Brazil, Nigeria, and her ancestral home, Sierra Leone. Her creative process unfolds through deep engagement with archives that honor Indigenous intelligence and histories of resistance. As she moves through water and across land, she gathers materials – each carrying its own story. The remnants of this journey – drinking water sachets, fragments of conversation, shells, and healing herbs – are woven into the fabric as embodied testimonies of exchange, transformed into marks of evocation and acts of fabrication.

At the Bienal, the artist invites viewers into a meditative space, where layers of textile narratives and audiovisual records unfold. Fawundu collaborates with quilombola communities and local artists to explore the subtle ways Luba, Kongo, and Yoruba systems persist in Bahia. These ancestral retentions are expressed through gestural embodiment in her video works, revealing layers of cultural memory and spiritual continuity. Her participation in the Bienal is a call to tune in to ancestral and cosmic rhythms –a choreography of forces where earth, pulse, and trajectory vibrate in harmony.

Ariana Nuala

This participation is supported by: Instituto Sacatar

Ibeji, Cosmas and Damian at the Kongo River, 2025. Archival inkjet photograph.

60,9 × 182,8 cm. Photo: Adama Delphine Fawundu.

An Offering at Kongo River, 2025. Archival inkjet photograph.

60,9 × 88,9 cm. Photo: Adama Delphine Fawundu.

Aislan Pankararu

Displacements, encounters, and distancing are fertile substrates for Aislan Pankararu’s work. The artist’s biography reveals several significant movements: from the Pankararu community of Petrolândia, in the Pernambuco countryside, to Brasília, the federal capital; and then from Brasília to São Paulo, where he meets the Pankararu who live in the Real Parque community. These displacements imply a partial distancing from the Pankararu culture and a subsequent re-encounter with it, which is crossed by other experiences.

His initial output takes up the practice of drawing and features representations of the praiás – garments made of straw that constitute the physical manifestation of the Encantados, entities worshipped by the Pankararu. These entities dwelled in the waterfalls that surrounded this people’s territory, but which were destroyed by the floods resulting from the construction of the Itaparica dam on the São Francisco River in 1988. The mystery that was key to the Pankararu’s practical and symbolic organization began to seek other manifestations. Moving away from figurative representation, Aislan paints shapes inspired by the traditional body painting of his people, using white clay on unconventional kraft paper – a support that restores the chromatic relationship between white paint and dark skin. Balls, circular shapes, and crosses – part of the graphic repertoire of Pankararu painting – are repeated in a cosmos of their own. You can observe and get carried away by the patterns that are formed and seem to move over the surface of paper, cotton, leather, or linen.

Água de imbuzeiro [Water from the Imbu Tree], 2024. Acrylic on raw linen. 70 × 90 cm. Photo: Ricardo Prado.

Aislan’s artistic output is also an exaltation of the Indigenous people of the Brazilian Northeast and their territory. This is revealed in the organic forms, the branching that suggests blooms, the twists and the spiky, thorn-like lines that recall caatinga vegetation. The artist’s experience in medical classes and laboratories informs his visuality with microscopic images, which endow traditional graphic signs with membranes, flagella, and fimbria. In addition to white on brown, he incorporates colors from other peoples, resulting in a complex scene of colorful and vibrant elements in an agitated state. More recently, Aislan’s work has also unfolded in the three-dimensional field, with materials such as straw and ceramics, taking on forms similar to those of his paintings.

His production resists simple explanations, as it establishes a strong presence and forces us to be together. The result of multiple encounters, Aislan Pankararu’s work superimposes experiences and restores the space of art to the field of mystery – often rejected by hegemonic ways of living and thinking.

Caio

Bonifácio

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

O encontro da terra seca, água doce e água salgada [The Encounter of Dry Land, Fresh Water, and Salt Water], 2024. Acrylic and permanent marker on raw linen. 70 × 90 cm. Photo: Ricardo Prado.

Raukura Turei

Timutimu (kōkōwai), 2024. Aumangea Bay kōkōwai, kerewhenua and papakura, Maraetai aumoana, gum arabic, polymer, and graphite on linen. 60 × 120 × 3,5 cm.

Artist and architect Raukura Turei began exhibiting in 2016, coming into prominence with The Earth Looks Upon Us: Ko Papatūānuku te matua o te tangata, curated by Tina Barton at Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Wellington, in 2018. For this exhibition, Turei installed Te poho o Hine-Ruhi (2018), using clay, acrylic, and water on digital print. Measuring a majestic 10 × 4m, the work signaled her deep commitment to exploring whenua (earth pigment), while also affirming that working at an immense scale is very much her element.

Te Ara Uwha, the path of the sacred feminine, consists of four female Māori deities represented across several whenua paintings. Drawing from Te Ao Māori – the Māori world and worldview – Turei invokes the significance, mana (prestige), and power of the female deity to bring her works into being. Central to this cosmology is the separation of Papatūānuku, the Earth Mother and paramount matriarchal deity, from her lover Ranginui, the celestial, patriarchal deity. From this separation emerged Te Ao Mārama, the world of light – a creation story shared across many Oceanic cultures as the beginning of human existence.

Photo: Greta van der Star.

Turei writes, “Māori have a saying, ‘ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ – ‘I am the land and the land is me.’ We trace our genealogy back to Papatūānuku, Earth Mother, and Ranginui, Sky Father, and the myriad children who came forth to embody every element of the natural world, and whose essence is captured in every part of our being, our DNA.” Kurawaka, Papatūānuku’s pubic region and the place where the first woman was created, is a sacred red earth known as kōkōwai. In Turei’s installation, four deities are represented by large-scale paintings supported by fine pou [vertical posts]. These works embody Papatūānuku/ Kurawaka; Hineahuone, the first woman formed from the red earth of Kurawaka; Hinetītama, daughter of Hineahuone, who later transitions into Hine-nui-te-pō, the deity of death and guardian of the underworld. When viewed or imagined from above, the installation reveals the Pouhine design – a weaving pattern representing the inversion of the Poutama, a traditionally masculine form. Pouhine is a vessel-like structure honoring the whare tangata, the womb. This structure maps the lineage from light into darkness, from the realm of the living to the spiritual domain, where Hine-nui-te-pō receives her children and guides them to Hawaiki, the ancestral and spiritual homeland of the Māori and related Oceanic nations that share this whakapapa [genealogy].

Nathan Pōhio

This participation is supported by: Creative New Zealand Huru manu, 2024. Aumangea Bay kōkōwai, kerewhenua and papakura, Maraetai aumoana, gum arabic, polymer, and graphite on linen. 91 × 152 × 3,5 cm. Photo: Sam Hartnett.

Rebeca Carapiá

For the works on show at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Rebeca Carapiá studied the walking palm – also known as paxiúba or by its scientific name, Socratea exorrhiza. This tree, found in the Amazon River basin and Central America, has sturdy, tangled aerial roots that are not buried but exposed above the ground, and which, over time, move around. They grow toward the sun in search of water and nutrients, while the roots that remain in the shade rot and die, serving as organic matter for the generation of new branches. Of significant visual power, the tree expands its branches throughout the space and encourages us to think about ancestral foundations that are dynamically transformed over time, embodying resilience and mobile foundations through intricate geometry.

The drawings of their roots also connect with the characteristic forms of Carapiá’s practice, focused on the formation and expansion of languages, in which abstract compositions are made with copper, iron, and solder. Their sinuous lines rehearse and perpetuate paths, wanderings, and walks, materializing the synthesis of an existence in movement – and of walking itself as an artistic, epistemic, and life methodology. Evincing dialogues that are usually

Apenas depois da chuva [Only After the Rain], 2025. View of the commissioned installation at Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho. Photo: Ícaro Moreno / Instituto Inhotim.

neglected, such as sensitive perception, the mirrored and moved understanding of the present, and the mastery of materials that are often linked to violent masculinity, Carapiá emphasizes a desiring and liberating drive to create a philosophical body – or endowing an entity with a body in pure language.

The artist presents her sculptures as celebrations of the stages that formed them, from collective and shared production to overcoming technical challenges and socio-historical obstacles. They emphasize the ambivalent oscillation of simultaneously opening up in flourishes and retracting in formal synthesis, filling space while incorporating its voids, rehearsing a lightness of movement despite the inescapable weight of the material, or even inhabiting an integrating zone between drawing, sculpture, and installation – or between monument and filigree. Carapiá invites us to understand that there is no contradiction between being anchored to the ancestral ground and taking flight.

Mateus Nunes

Translated from Portuguese by Philip Somervell

Flutuantes [Floaters], 2024. Iron and copper. 225 × 305 × 155 cm. Photo: Estúdio em Obra. Courtesy of the artist and Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo.

Kamala Ibrahim Ishag

From her first childhood scribblings to her mature artistic works developed during her journey spanning across the past six decades, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, one of Sudan’s most influential modernist artists, has created deeply personal and spiritually resonant works that reflect her unique visual language and approach to exploring inner worlds, ancestral connections, and the complex interplay of the visible and invisible realms. Drawing inspiration from spiritual and devotional practices such as Zar ceremonies, Ishag’s works primarily address the conditions of women within society.

Among the works displayed in the Bienal, Untitled (Zaar) (1973) stands out for its direct engagement with the Zar ceremony – a form of spiritual possession and healing practiced by women through trance-like music, singing, and dance. Dinner (2022) is an emblematic piece reflective of Ishag’s focus on domestic rituals and communal spaces. The piece portrays several scenes of intimacy shared by female figures sitting around tables, highlighting that the act of dining beyond the physical can be a shared psychic and emotional experience. In People (2022), Ishag’s portrayal of human figures veers away from realism and toward abstraction and symbolism. The individuals are not defined by distinct facial features or expressions, but by their contours and postures. Engulfed within a spherical-shaped form surrounded by trees, the work could be interpreted as the artist’s commitment to portraying the collective soul rather than the individual self. Faces (2017) focuses more intimately on identity, but not in the conventional sense. Produced using more ashy tones, the piece portrays a multitude of masks or vessels – faces that seem to carry histories, spirits, and emotions that mirror the tense and unbearable conditions women endure within patriarchal societies.

Faces, 2017. Oil on canvas. 170 × 173 cm. Photo: Waleed Shah.

In the work Guarding Angels (2015), Ishag presents spiritual protectors not as heavenly figures but as ethereal presences woven into the earthly realm represented by domestic objects such as chairs and tables. These guardians seem faceless and formless, suggesting that their power lies in subtle influence and unseen strength. Inspired in great part by folktales recited by the female figures in her family, her work suggests that women in particular carry the dual burden and blessing of guardianship. Finally, Two Figures in Two Balls (2016) could be interpreted as a piece that explores themes such as duality and enclosure. Portraying two distinct figures isolated yet connected, the work invites us to self-introspection. Ishag’s use of soft lines and blended hues creates a sense of timelessness, as if these beings exist in an eternal, meditative state.

Expansive but not exhaustive, these works reveal Kamala Ibrahim Ishag’s profound sensitivity to the spiritual dimensions of human experience and challenge linear narratives by embracing feminine power and the deep interconnectivity between the living, the dead, and the natural world.

Billy Fowo

Dinner, 2022. Oil on canvas. 199 × 339 cm. Photo: Waleed Shah.

Guarding Angels, 2015. Oil on canvas. 134 × 241 cm. Photo: Mohamed Noor Eldin.

This participation is supported by: Arab Fund for Arts and Culture

Andrew Roberts

In his artistic practice, Andrew Roberts works with the materiality of horror, and it is multidisciplinary: as research-based as it is poetic, and as close to the world-building of videogames as it is to the tactile realm of sculpture. His ideas of horror are influenced as much by the Hollywood and videogame industrial complexes, as they are by the vernacular and gore-ish narratives of violence in Northern Mexico written in the 20th century by Nelly Campobello, and the strange fictionalization of larger-than-life, nation-wide conflicts in the works of Fernanda Melchor and Mariana Enríquez. As the philosopher Eugene Thacker has explained, “demons” require a “strange intimacy” that stays with us, that crams the signal with noise: the anti-mediation of hyper-communication, that confuses reality, mixing the natural with the supernatural in our perception of the world. For Roberts, this coalesces into what he calls “spectral realism,” a keen interest in the aspects of horror that lie beyond the structured logic of human rationality. In that sense, his piece is about extra-human substances, or materialities, whose behavior exceeds those very thresholds. In the video, we see three spectral entities, not quite ghosts, that feel pulled to manifest themselves at a fast food location on an equally violent and quotidian border. A burger-smelling and convenient meeting point, where divided families, cross-border workers, and students find each other. The fluctuating appearance of these specters evinces their ungovernability, their intermingling-agency: how they haunt as much as they are haunted. One of the entities embodies a deep darkness, lurking and shifting, coming and going – becoming a clear visual boundary between what is known and what is unknown. Another one is rubber, the stuff of toys, a third cousin of plastic and oil, elastic and resilient, preternaturally malleable and born for disposable

representation; the last one personifies that familiar yet alarming, terror-friendly red light, as common to big, obvious advertising as it is to the big, obvious hints that bloodshed is on its way, as coded in sleek, contemporary horror films. The enclosure for this video simulates the fixed and basic furniture of franchised restaurants, but it also alludes to carceral furnishings, reminding us of that other type of violence that prevails in border zones. Its rounded corners also wink to the modern-era spirit séances, where the death would be contacted, mediated; and in that sense it also conjures the ghosts of art’s minimalist past.

Gaby Cepeda

Haunted, 2025. Video stills. 4K digital animation, color, sound; 21’. Courtesy of the artist and Pequod Co., Mexico City.

Alberto Pitta

For over four decades, Alberto Pitta has developed a visual practice that weaves together Afro-Brazilian knowledge systems, spirituality, and graphic experimentation. Fabric – his primary medium – serves as a platform for non-hegemonic education, forging connections between art, history, and collective experience. This relationship is deeply rooted in his life story and was inherited as a familial legacy. The son of Mãe Santinha de Oyá – spiritual leader, educator, embroideress, and founder of Ilê Axé Oyá in the Pirajá neighborhood of Salvador – Pitta was raised within the artistic and existential practices of Candomblé. Since the 1980s, his work has established a distinctive visual language within Bahia’s Black Carnival, shaped by his designs for costumes and prints for iconic Afro-Brazilian Carnival groups such as Ilê Aiyê (Band’Aiyê), Olodum, Filhos de Gandhy, Oba Laiyê, and the Afoxé Filhos do Congo. In 1998, he founded the Cortejo Afro, expanding his aesthetic investigations and reaffirming fabric as the central element of his artistic practice. Among his most characteristic techniques is the use of white-onwhite, though the interplay of vibrant colors, layered patterns, and complex compositions also features in his work, creating visual rhythms that evoke narratives anchored in community and symbolism.

Beyond Carnival, Pitta’s work transcends the boundaries of textile design. Grounded in silkscreen printing, his practice engages with the field of contemporary art, extending into painting and sculptural experimentation. With a strong international presence, his work has circulated through various art institutions, building connections that transcend both geographic and conceptual borders. His fabrics – situated between ritual and the art of memory –are part of a broader visual repertoire that may be described as Afro-Atlantic, in which patterns, symbols, and gestures sustain dialogues between Brazils, Africas, and their diasporas.

His creative process unfolds as a shared practice, in which the weaving of the fabric interlaces with the lives of the communities who wear it, whether in his studio – reflected in the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – in the Afro-Brazilian Carnival groups that parade through the streets of Salvador, or within gallery spaces. In this process, Pitta’s fabrics and stories continue to speak – alive, in motion, adorning bodies and crossing time.

Hanayrá Negreiros

Translated from Portuguese by Sergio Maciel

Views of Alberto Pitta’s studio.

Photo: Jeferson Lima.

Artist Index

278 Adama Delphine Fawundu

80 Adjani Okpu-Egbe

280 Aislan Pankararu

118 Akinbode Akinbiyi

134 Alain Padeau

290 Alberto Pitta

84 Aline Baiana

110 Amina Agueznay

66 Ana Raylander Mártis dos Anjos

288 Andrew Roberts

194 Antonio Társis

266 Behjat Sadr

200 Berenice Olmedo

234 Bertina Lopes

166 Camille Turner

56 Carla Gueye

104 Cevdet Erek

238 Chaïbia Talal

116 Christopher Cozier

218 Cici Wu with Yuan Yuan

128 Cynthia Hawkins

246 Edival Ramosa

70 Emeka Ogboh

180 Ernest Cole

260 Ernest Mancoba

256 Farid Belkahia

254 Firelei Báez

74 Forensic Architecture/ Forensis

268 Forugh Farrokhzad

50 Frank Bowling 274 Frankétienne

44 Gê Viana

148 Gervane de Paula

252 Gōzō Yoshimasu

202 Hajra Waheed

172 Hamedine Kane

242 Hamid Zénati

156 Hao Jingban

276 Heitor dos Prazeres

178 Helena Uambembe

250 Hessie

272 Huguette Caland

264 I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih (Murni)

248 Imran Mir

226 Isa Genzken

144 Joar Nango with the Girjegumpi crew

212 Josèfa Ntjam

160 Juliana dos Santos 170 Julianknxx

140 Kader Attia

286 Kamala Ibrahim Ishag

184 Kenzi Shiokava

222 Korakrit Arunanondchai

220 Laila Hida

138 Laure Prouvost

100 Leiko Ikemura

186 Leila Alaoui

92 Leo Asemota

176 Leonel Vásquez 154 Lidia Lisbôa

214 Lynn Hershman Leeson

48 Madame Zo 258 Madiha Umar

58 Malika Agueznay

108 Manauara Clandestina

68 Mansour Ciss Kanakassy

208 Mao Ishikawa

130 Márcia Falcão

236 Maria Auxiliadora

230 María Magdalena Campos-Pons

112 Marlene Almeida

224 Maxwell Alexandre

158 Meriem Bennani

182 Metta Pracrutti

210 Michele Ciacciofera

196 Ming Smith

72 Minia Biabiany

102 Moffat Takadiwa

244 Mohamed Melehi

262 Moisés Patrício

190 Myriam Omar Awadi

142 Myrlande Constant

46 Nádia Taquary

106 Nari Ward

206 Nguyễn Trinh Thi

82 Noor Abed

270 Nzante Spee

164 Olivier Marboeuf

90 Olu Oguibe

60 Oscar Murillo

98 Otobong Nkanga

122 Pélagie Gbaguidi

126 Pol Taburet

42 Precious Okoyomon

282 Raukura Turei

124 Raven Chacon, Iggor Cavalera, and Laima Leyton

284 Rebeca Carapiá

216 Richianny Ratovo

76 Ruth Ige

162 Sadikou Oukpedjo

54 Sallisa Rosa

132 Sara Sejin Chang

(Sara van der Heide)

174 Sérgio Soarez

52 Sertão Negro

150 Sharon Hayes

188 Shuvinai Ashoona

168 Simnikiwe Buhlungu

86 Song Dong

64 Suchitra Mattai

96 Tanka Fonta

240 Thania Petersen

78 Theo Eshetu

198 Théodore Diouf

88 Theresah Ankomah

152 Trương Công Tùng

114 Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn

146 Vilanismo

228 Werewere Liking

120 Wolfgang Tillmans

204 Zózimo Bulbul

Casa do Povo

324 Alexandre Paulikevitch and MEXA

322 Boxe Autônomo and Dorothée Munyaneza

320 Marcelo Evelin

Conceptual team

36th Bienal de São Paulo

Not All Travellers Walk Roads –

Of Humanity as Practice

Chief curator

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is a curator, author, and biotechnologist, currently serving as the director and chief curator of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin. He is the founder and former artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, as well as the artistic director of sonsbeek, in Arnhem. He is a professor and head of faculty in the master’s program in Spatial Strategies at the weißensee academy of art berlin. Among his published works are The Delusions of Care (2021), An Ongoing-Offcoming Tale: Ruminations on Art, Culture, Politics and Us/Others (2022), and Pidginization as Curatorial Method (2023).

Co-curators

Alya Sebti is a contemporary art curator and director of the ifa-Galerie (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) in Berlin, where she initiated the research and exhibition platform Untie to Tie –On Colonial Legacies in Contemporary Societies. She was co-curator of the European biennial Manifesta, in Marseille (2020), guest curator of the Biennale de Dakar (2018), and artistic director of the Marrakech Biennale (2014). She has led curatorial research through mentorship programs at the ZK/U artist residency (Berlin) and at MACAAL (Marrakech).

Anna Roberta Goetz is a curator and writer specialized in artistic strategies challenging narratives and structures in society. She held curatorial positions at Museum Marta Herford and Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, and was assistant curator of the German Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia (2013). She curated survey exhibitions with Rodney McMillian, Cinthia Marcelle, Banu Cennetoğlu, and Laure Prouvost, and group exhibitions, such as Long Gone, Still Here: Sound as Medium (Marta Herford, 2023) and Genealogies in the Middle East and Latin America (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2021). In parallel, she has taught at art academies internationally.

Thiago de Paula Souza is a curator and educator. He was co-curator of the 38th Panorama of Brazilian Art at MAM São Paulo (2024), the exhibition Some May Work as Symbols: Art Made in Brazil, 1950s-70s at Raven Row (London, 2024), the Nomadic Program at Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art (Middelburg, 2022-2023), the show While We Are Embattled, at Para Site (Hong Kong, 2022), and Atos de revolta, at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (2022). He served as curatorial advisor for the 58th Carnegie International (2021-2022), curated Tony Cokes’ first solo exhibition at BAK (Utrecht, 2018-2019), and was part of

the curatorial team of the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2018) and the 3rd Frestas – Trienal de Artes (São Paulo, 2020-2021). He is currently a member of the Artistic Committee of the NESR Art Foundation in Angola and is a PhD candidate in the arts program at HDK-Valand – University of Gothenburg.

Co-curator at large

Keyna Eleison is a curator, researcher, and educator in art and culture. She coordinated all public institutions of the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Department of Culture and taught at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, where she was also a teaching coordinator. Eleison was the curator of the 10th Bienal Internacional de Arte SIART in Bolivia (2018), the curator of the 1st Bienal das Amazônias (2023), the artistic director of the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (2020-2023), and director of research and content at the Bienal das Amazônias.

Strategy and communication advisor

Henriette Gallus is a communication and cultural strategist as well as an editor. After working as an editor and literary agent from 2005 onwards, in 2011 she became the press officer of dOCUMENTA (13) (2012), and in 2014 head of communications of documenta 14, in both Kassel and Athens (2017). From 2018 to 2022 she was deputy director of the festival of contemporary art steirischer herbst, in Graz, until she became deputy director of Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, in 2022. She has advised numerous

cultural institutions worldwide, among them: sonsbeek 20–24, in Arnhem; Rencontres de Bamako, in Mali (2018 and 2022); the German Pavilion at the 58th La Biennale di Venezia (2019); Württembergischer Kunstverein, in Stuttgart (2021), and Castello di Rivoli – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, in Turin (2017–2023).

Curatorial assistants

André Pitol is an art researcher, curator, and professor with a PhD from Universidade de São Paulo (USP). He teaches at École Intuit Lab São Paulo and Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). He has written essays for e-flux, The Brooklyn Rail, Photographies, Mídia Ninja, and ZUM. He curated Edival Ramosa – Nova construção totêmica (2024) and was associate curator of A parábola do progresso (2022).

Leonardo Matsuhei holds a bachelor’s degree and a teaching certification in visual arts from the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Since 2009, he has developed projects at the intersection of education, public programming, and curatorial practice. He coordinated educational initiatives for the exhibitions Gilberto Mendes 100 and Ars Sonora – Hermeto Pascoal (Sesc SP, 2022-2024). He worked as assistant for mediation and public programs at Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) (2016-2019) and collaborated on the Open Encounters project of the 31st Bienal de São Paulo (2013-2014). Since 2021, he has been a member of Bananal, an independent cultural space and collective.

Authors

Aldones Nino is a curator, philosopher, and art historian. He currently works as a curator at Collegium, in Arévalo, Spain. His research explores the relationships between art, politics, and memory, with a focus on decolonial perspectives and the critical revision of art historiography. He is a member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the International Committee for Education and Cultural Action (CECA).

Amanda Carneiro is a curator at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP). She was part of the curatorial team of the 60th La Biennale di Venezia (2024) and served as an editor for Afterall journal. At MASP, she organized exhibitions and catalogs including Serigrafistas queer (2024-2025), Abdias Nascimento (2022), and Sonia Gomes (2018), among others.

Ana Paula Lopes holds a bachelor’s degree in art: history, criticism, and curatorship from Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP) and a master’s degree in art history from Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp). She has published texts in the magazine Terremoto (Mexico) and in Experiências Negras (a digital publication by the Instituto Tomie Ohtake, in São Paulo). She is currently an assistant curator at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo.

Andrew Maerkle is a writer, editor, and translator based in Tokyo. He is currently the editorial director of Art Week Tokyo. From 2010 to 2024 he was deputy editor of the online publication ART iT, and from 2006 to 2008 he was deputy editor of ArtAsiaPacific. He published the book of translations Kishio Suga: Writings, vol.2, 1980-1989 (2025).

Anna Schneider is the director of DAS MINSK in Potsdam and founding member of the Hamid Zénati Estate. With a background in postcolonial thought, her curatorial work pays particular attention to global sociocultural histories and how these inform the making, form, and meaning of artistic expression.

Ariana Nuala is a researcher and curator whose work explores power, diaspora, and impermanence in collaboration with collectives. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in art history at the Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB). She works at the Museu Afro Brasil Emanoel Araujo and has previously worked at Oficina Francisco Brennand, in Recife. She was co-curator of the 38th Panorama of Brazilian Art, at Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo.

Arthur Gruson is a writer, researcher, and translator whose work spans contemporary art and cultural discourse. He is also director at

mor charpentier, a Paris-Bogotá-based gallery dedicated to politically engaged art practices.

Billy Fowo is a curator and writer with interests across various fields and disciplines, such as the sonic, linguistics, and literature. He graduated from De Appel’s Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam (2023). He works at SAVVY Contemporary – The Laboratory of Form-Ideas, in Berlin.

Bruna Fernanda is a researcher, curator, and educator. She holds a degree in history, a master’s in Brazilian studies, and is currently a PhD candidate in aesthetics and art history, all from the Universidade de São Paulo (USP). She is currently part of the management team at Ateliê397, an independent contemporary art space in São Paulo, and a member of the feminist collective Vozes Agudas.

Caio Bonifácio is an artist, curator, professor, and researcher. He has taught art history at Cursinho Popular from Associação Cultural de Educadores e Pesquisadores das Universidades de São Paulo (ACEPUSP) and worked as an editor at Revista Tonel (an independent art publication). He is currently a curator and researcher at Ateliê 397.

Cameron Ah Loo-Matamua is a writer, curator, and educator. They are curator of special projects at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki – where they co-curated the inaugural Aotearoa Contemporary Triennial (2024) –and have held teaching and curatorial positions at the University of

Auckland and Auckland University of Technology.

Deliasofia Zacarias is the director’s office executive assistant and fellow at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where she co-curated the exhibition Painting in the River of Angels: Judy Baca and The Great Wall (2023-2024). Zacarias currently serves on the board of the Arts Administrators of Color Network. She holds a master’s degree in art history from Arizona State University and a bachelor’s degree in business administration and studio art from Trinity University.

Érica Burini is an art historian, researcher, and curator. She holds a bachelor’s degree in visual arts and a master’s in art history from Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp). She currently works as a curator at Ateliê397, an independent contemporary art space in São Paulo.

Gaby Cepeda is a writer, art critic, and curator whose work grapples with counter-humanism, technology, feminism, accelerationism, and art labor.

Guilherme Fernandes is a visual artist, educator, and researcher. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in art history at Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp), focusing on the life and work of the artist Manuel Messias dos Santos (1945-2001). His research interests include the history of printmaking, with an emphasis on the Brazilian context of the second half of the 20th century, through a decolonial and Afro-diasporic lens.

Hanayrá Negreiros is a fashion curator and PhD candidate in history at Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). Her work weaves together fashion and visual arts, exploring transnational approaches and the clothing histories of the African diaspora in Brazil. She was associate fashion curator at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) and co-curator of the 2024 State of Fashion Biennale and the exhibition Artistas do vestir: uma costura dos afetos at Itaú Cultural (2024-2025).

Hung Duong writes independently. His criticism of Southeast Asian contemporary art is founded on exchanges with regional artmakers about art’s versatile roles in society. He runs his own website, sea-through, as a reservoir for his sprawling thoughts, while actively contributing to Artforum, Frieze, ArtAsiaPacific, and other platforms.

Lara Koseff is an art liaison, writer, and creative based in Johannesburg. Along with Londi Modiko and Nthabiseng Mokoena, she is founding director of Independent Network for Contemporary Culture & Art (INCCA), a non-profit company that supports independent cultural practice.

Lucas Goulart is a curator and researcher. He holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp) and investigates the inextricability between modernity and barbarism, with an emphasis on Brazilian developmentalist projects and the

correlation between urban space and subjectivity. He has curated exhibitions and written critical texts for institutions such as Ateliê397 and the Museu de Arte Sacra de São Paulo.

Luiza Marcolino is a curator and visual artist. She holds a bachelor’s degree in visual arts from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) and is currently developing the project “Curating as an Artist’s Space” at Universidade Estadual de Minas Gerais (UEMG). In 2021, she organized the international mail art open call Re-volver, a research project awarded by the Ministry of Tourism and the Government of the State of Minas Gerais. The project also included a virtual exhibition and a subsequent international seminar hosted by the Centro Cultural UFMG.

Margarita Lila Rosa is a public historian, curator, and writer specializing in Black Atlantic history and contemporary art. She received her PhD from Princeton University (2021) and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University from 2021-2023. In 2024, she joined the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Arts Leadership Praxis.

Mario A Llanos is co-director of Radio Huracán and is also part of the collective Oficina de Situaciones. His work explores the networks within and beyond the Caribbean, unveiling connections between notions of land, sea, human, and non-human that tie us together. He establishes a link between historical processes and landscapes through the metaphor of writing and inscribing knowledge in water.

Marissa Del Toro is assistant director of exhibitions and programs at NXTHVN in New Haven. Since 2021, she has also worked with Museums Moving Forward, and previously held positions at Phoenix Art Museum; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; the Getty Research Institute, in Los Angeles; and the UTSA Art Gallery, in San Antonio.

Mateus Nunes is an art critic, curator, and researcher. He holds a PhD in art history from the University of Lisbon and completed postdoctoral studies in Amazonian studies at Universidad San Francisco de Quito and the Getty Foundation. He is currently pursuing postdoctoral research in art and architectural history at the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), where he is a visiting professor. He frequently publishes texts on art in journals such as Artforum, ArtReview, Frieze, Flash Art, and seLecT_ceLeste.

Meriem Berrada is an artistic director, curator, and consultant. She played a key role in establishing MACAAL museum, in Morocco, and contributes to global discussions on African and Arab contemporary art. Her curatorial practice critically explores the intersections of art and craft in contemporary narratives. She co-curated Rencontres de Bamako (2021) and directed Tasweer Photography Biennale, in Qatar (2025).

Morad Montazami is an art historian, publisher, and curator. After serving at Tate Modern (London) between 2014-2019 as Middle East and North Africa curator, he developed the

independent publishing and curatorial platform Zamân Books & Curating to explore Arab, African, and Asian modernities.

Naiomy Guerrero is a curator and art historian. She is the museum specialist for Latinx Studies at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, D.C., and specializes in Black Latine modern and contemporary art and material culture. She is currently a PhD student in art history at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. Guerrero has taught art history courses at the City College of New York and is a Graduate Center Teaching Fellow, Posse Foundation scholar.

Nathalia Grilo engages in a multidimensional practice that intersects art, music, and Black studies, guided by the perspective of Black radical imagination. As a curator, she connects different artistic and intellectual languages to explore themes such as memory, resistance, and spirituality.

Nathan Pōhio is an artist and curator operating under mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge systems). From 2002 to 2021, he worked at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū primarily as exhibition designer, and then as an assistant curator from 2015 onward. His work was included at documenta 14 (2017), in both Athens and Kassel. In 2022, Pōhio took up the role of senior curator, Māori Art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

Nkule Mabaso is director of the Fotogalleriet (Oslo), a publicly funded kunsthalle for photography in the Nordic region. Concurrently, she is a Ph.D. researcher at the HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg, and founding director of the Natal Collective, an independent production company active in the research and presentation of Africana contemporary art and politics.

Raquel Barreto is the chief curator of the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio) and a historian. She co-curated the exhibitions Carolina Maria de Jesus: A Brazil for Brazilians (2021-2023), Heitor dos Prazeres Is My Name (2023), Lélia in Us: Popular Celebrations and Amefricanity (2024), A History of Brazilian Art (2024), and Forms of Water (2025). She was a finalist for the 2024 Jabuti Prize in the visual arts category.

Renato Menezes is an art historian and curator. Since 2022, he has been a curator at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, where he has organized several exhibitions, including J. Cunha: Tropical Body (2024), Between the Head and the Earth: Traditional African Textile Art (2024), and Weaving the Morning: Modern Life and Nocturnal Experience in Brazilian Art (2025).

Rita Vênus is a curator at the Oficina Francisco Brennand, in Recife. Her practice explores oracular threads in daytime and nighttime imagery through a cosmological lens. She curated the exhibition Núcleo Saturno,

the artist residency Criação na Olaria, the Janela International Film Festival in Recife, and FestCurtasBH –Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival.

Roberta Tenconi is chief curator at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, where she has curated exhibitions by artists such as Saodat Ismailova, Petrit Halilaj, Bruce Nauman, Ann Veronica Janssens, Laure Prouvost, and Nari Ward, among others. She has collaborated with institutions worldwide, including the Gwangju Biennale, Manifesta, and Fondazione Nicola Trussardi. Tenconi was part of the curatorial teams of the 55th La Biennale di Venezia and the 4th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. She is currently curating a solo exhibition by Nan Goldin.

Starasea Nidiala Camara is a curator and scholar whose practice centers on Black cultural and artistic production throughout the Americas. She is currently the curatorial and public engagement assistant at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) in New York City.

Wes Chagas works as a curator, researcher, and podcaster. He holds a degree in art history from Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp) and researches topics related to sexuality and gender within the field of visual arts. He is the host and co-creator of the podcast O conceito.

The Exhibition Design of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo

Spatial color diagram of the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion. The image shows the colors assigned to the intersecting vertical and horizontal orientation axes, which materialize in the exhibition through fabrics and wooden panels. Created by Santiago Rid.

The architectural and exhibition design is signed by Gisele de Paula and Tiago Guimarães. “Inspired by the fluidity of rivers and the image of the estuary present in the curatorial proposal, the exhibition space is being designed as a sensory journey, with sinuous margins that invite listening, encounters, and pause. The proposal embraces emptiness as a force and space as a landscape in constant motion. Like travellers, it does not repeat the path, but reinvents itself in a continuous rite of transformation and presence,” the architects affirm.

The exhibition design of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo evokes the fluid and transformative nature of rivers. Like a moving body that crosses, outlines, and reinvents space, the exhibition is built in dialogue with the idea of crossing. Organic forms and lightweight structures compose a sensory landscape. More than defining paths, the design suggests ways of being and moving, understanding flow as a form of existence. The project also counted with initial architectural advisory by Agence Clémence Farrell.

Invocations

As an essential part of its curatorial approach, the 36th Bienal de São Paulo presented the Invocations: a series of gatherings featuring poetry, music, performance, and debates that echoed the exhibition’s central concepts, exploring and deepening notions of humanity across different geographies. Resulting from collaborations with various cultural institutions, these programs preceded the opening of the exhibition at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion in São Paulo. In addition to the main exhibition, these gatherings led to two important outcomes directed at the public: much of their content was incorporated into the Bienal’s educational publications, organized into four volumes, and video recordings of the events are available on the Bienal de São Paulo’s YouTube channel, as well as in a dedicated space within the exhibition itself.

Invocation #1

Souffles: On Deep Listening and Active Reception

Marrakech, Nov. 14-15, 2024

The first Invocation of the 36th Bienal focused on the circularity as well as the precarity of breath, Gnawa music as a way of being, Sufi cultures, and listening as a practice of coexistence, as well as place- and space-making.

Nov. 14, 2024

LE 18

11am–12pm

Introduction by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, poetry reading by Alya Sebti, followed by a collective listening session of poetry and guembri Maalem

12pm–1pm

Qui est Ahmed Ben Draoui? Performative reading on fiction and representation of the origin by Laila Hida with Mourad Belouadi

3pm–4:30pm

Lecture by Ghassan El Hakim on his research contextualizing the practice of Gnawa master Maalem Abdellah El Gourd

5pm–6pm

Lecture-performance by Simnikiwe Buhlungu on synthesis, intonation, and looping

6:30pm–7pm

Introduction and screening of the film La terre en transe, by Taoufiq Izzediou

7:30pm–9pm

Gnawa Again! Performance by Ghassan El Hakim with Gnawa master Maalem Abdellah El Gourd accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Mourad Belouadi

Nov. 15, 2024

LE 18

10am–11am

Collective reading of Abdellatif Laâbi’s poems with Kenza Sefrioui

11am–12pm

Lecture-performance by Kenza Sefrioui on the legacy of Souffles

12pm–1pm

Lecture by Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa on the magazine Maghreb Art

3pm–4:30pm

Listening session by Leila Bencharnia

Fondation Dar Bellarj

5:30pm–6:30pm

Opening speech by Maha Elmadi and video screening by Laila Hida

6:30pm–7:30pm

Hadra, final performance with Lalla Khala and the Gifted Mothers of Dar Bellarj

Invocation #2

Bigidi mè pa tonbé! Totter, But Never Fall! Guadeloupe, Dec. 5-7, 2024

The concept of this Invocation stems from bigidi, core element of the Guadeloupean dance Gwoka. This dance, characterized by improvisation, alternates between moments of rupture and continuity in a constant effort to maintain balance.

Dec. 5, 2024

Lafabri’k

6pm–7pm

Welcoming note and introduction by Léna Blou, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, and Anna Roberta Goetz

7pm–7:30pm

Gwoka dance performance by Raymonde Torin, based on the seven fundamental Gwoka dances

7:30pm–8pm

Musical performance by Fritz Naffer and the Gwoka band Foubap

Dec. 6, 2024

Lafabri’k

10am–11am

“Le bigidi, un savoir incarné dans l’écrin du Lawonn” –Dance conference and workshop by Léna Blou around the praxis of “Bigidi’art”

11:30am–12:30pm

“Climate change impacts, adaptation, and resilience in the Caribbean: A narrative in Earth system balance, harmony, and resilience” – Lecture by Michelle Mycoo

2:30pm–3:30pm

“Dans le ventre des oiseaux, dans la bouche des femmes sauvages: une archive déparlante” – Lecture-performance by Olivier Marboeuf

4pm–5pm

AN SÉ…! Poetry slam and visual installation by Dory Sélèsprika and Anaïs Verspan

Dec. 7, 2024

Lafabri’k

10:30am–11:30am

jwen, sanblé, kontré, a proposition of performance by Yane Mareine, Minia Biabiany, and Santiago Quintana

12pm–1pm

“The Blip and the Pi tak: human verbs of the improbable” –Lecture by Tiéno Muntu (Étienne Jean-Baptiste)

3pm–4pm

“Mapping choreographic fugues: archipelagic writing in dance” – Lecture-performance by Lazaro Benitez

4:30pm– 6pm

Kalanje, performance by Geordy Zodidat Alexis

7:30pm–9pm

Swaré Lewoz with the Gwoka band Foubap

Invocation #3

Mawali–Taqsim: Improvisation as a Space and Technology of Humanity

Zanzibar, Feb. 11-13, 2025

This Invocation focused on the philosophical and artistic dimensions of Taarab, a musical genre that epitomizes the island’s cultural hybridity and resonates as a profound medium for expression, sentiment, and resilience. Improvisation, a fundamental part of Taarab music, offers a profound metaphor for human adaptability and interconnectedness.

Feb. 11, 2025

Maru Maru Hotel

7pm–7:45pm

Introduction and welcoming note by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Khamis Muhamed (DCMA), and Bernard Ntahondi

8:20pm–10pm

Performance by Siti Muharam

Feb. 12, 2025

Golden Tulip Stonetown Boutique

10am–10:45am

Lecture by Thabit Omar Kiringe, responsible for transcribing traditional Taarab music into notation at DCMA

11am–11:45am

Lecture by Rukia Ramadhani, from one of the oldest Taarab groups since 1905

2pm–3pm”

“Taarab: An audience experience in the heart of Zanzibar” – Presentation by Mohamed Ameir Muombwa

4pm–6:15pm

Lecture by Thania Petersen

7pm–7:45pm

Music performance and talk featuring DCMA Young Stars band

Feb. 13, 2025

Golden Tulip Stonetown Boutique

10am–11am

Lecture by Aisha Bakary (Hijab DJ) exploring her research into music and identity

11:15am–12:15pm

Lecture by Tryphon Evarist, DCMA’s artistic director and award-winning Taarab artist

4pm–4:45pm Poetry session with Mohamed Ilyas

5pm–5:45pm

Lecture by Bi Mariam Hamdan

7pm–8pm DJ set by Aisha Bakary (Hijab DJ)

Maru Maru Hotel

8:15pm–9:15pm

Musical performance by Uwaridi Female Band

Invocation #4

Bukimi no Tani ( 不気味の谷): The Uncanny Valley –The Affectivity of the Humanoid Tokyo, Apr. 12-14, 2025

Inspired by the concept of the “uncanny valley” proposed by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970, this Invocation reflected on the ambiguities of the human in the face of technology and the issues that emerge at the intersection between art, artificial intelligence, and corporeality.

Apr. 12, 2025

The 5th Floor

4pm–8pm

Screening program: Hikaru Fujii, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Tourmaline & Yuki Iiyama

4:30pm–5pm

Welcoming note by Andrew Maerkle, Kanako Sugiyama, Keyna Eleison, Thiago de Paula Souza, and Tomoya Iwata

5pm–5:30pm

Poetry reading by Sakisaka Kujira

5:30pm–7:30pm

触手の約束 �� Tentacle Cross: Live broadcasting session by Multiple Spirits (Mai Endo & Mika Maruyama) with MadokaShitone, Marina Lisa Komiya, and Shiori Watanabe

Apr. 13, 2025

Sogetsu Kaikan

11am–11:30am

Welcoming note by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

11:30am–12:10pm

Poetry performance by Gōzō Yoshimasu and Marylya

12:10pm–12:30pm

Listening session of Rain Dreamed by Sound: Homage to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, by Cecilia Vicuña

12:40pm–1:25pm

“Of Stone and Sand (parables one and two)” –Lecture-performance by You Nakai with Moe Tomita

2:30pm–2:45pm Intervention by Multiple Spirits

2:45pm–3:45pm

Conversation between Shiori Watanabe, Bidou Yamaguchi, and Yukie Kamiya on Noh, technologies, and affectivities

3:50pm–4:05pm

Experimental poetry reading by Yūki Nagae on Conceição Evaristo

4:20pm–5:20pm

Food workshop by Asako Iwama

4:35pm–5:20pm Intervention by Multiple Spirits

5:25pm–5:55pm

Lecture by Hiroshi Egaitsu on Japanese hip hop

6pm–6:40pm

Rap performances by Namichie, Danny Jin, and SRCFLP

7pm–8pm

Iruma River: Contemporary Noh presentation by Shiori Watanabe

The 5th Floor

1pm–8pm

Screening program: Hikaru Fujii, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Tourmaline, and Yuki Iiyama

21 KOMCEE West Lecture Hall, The University of Tokyo, Komaba Campus (organized in partnership with ACUT)

4pm–4:15pm

Welcoming note by Andrew Maerkle and Kenji Kajiya, director of the Art Center, The University of Tokyo

4:15pm–4:30pm

Poetry reading by Takako Arai

4:30pm–5:15pm

Conversation between T-Michael and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung on design technologies, cross-geographic dialogues, and emotional intelligence

5:25pm–6:25pm

Roundtable discussion with Hiroko Kamide, Takashi Ikegami, Yuko Hasegawa, and Zai Nomura on robotics, mind, and art

6:30pm–6:45pm

Poetry reading by Natsumi Aoyagi

6:45pm–8pm

Lecture by Tavia Nyong’o and conversation on the uncanny valley and the depressed cyborg

The 5th Floor

1pm–8pm

Screening program: Hikaru Fujii, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Tourmaline, and Yuki Iiyama

Tributary: Ensaio geral [Dress Rehearsal] Casa do Povo

In many ways, the Teatro de Arte Israelita Brasileiro (TAIB) is an underground theater. Having operated from the 1960s to the late 1990s, it was hidden within the basement of Casa do Povo, a subterranean refuge for Jewish migrants and activists, a stronghold of resistance during Brazil’s dictatorship, a hub for experimental performance, and a crucible for the artistic revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s. Its history is rich with political and popular theater, choral work, and experimental forms that continually stretched the boundaries of performance between amateur and professional. After being flooded in 2000, the theater was silenced for years, its stories submerged.

Ensaio geral is a performance program within the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, developed and rooted in this very space. The theater itself is not simply a frame but a proposition – an invitation to question and reimagine what theater can be and to rehearse it on a real-scale experience, hence the name of the program Ensaio geral, meaning “Dress Rehearsal.” Reopening the TAIB is not only an act of reclaiming the space but also of reigniting the question: What is theater and what theater can do?

Embracing the legacy of Casa do Povo, Ensaio geral focuses on practices that have often been excluded from canonical theater histories and institutional stages. This program delves into paratheatrical forms – moments when theater merges with the performativity of parades, sporting events, the subversive energy of cabaret. The invited artists will bring their own exploration of these hybrid practices. Each gesture in the program is conceived as a collaboration between artists from abroad and local initiatives, fostering a porous, evolving dramaturgy. The metaphor of the estuary, where sea and river meet, guides this return. Workshops and shared encounters with the community allow practices to rise above the surface, making space for new connections and exchanges.

The TAIB becomes a terrain where practices, communities, and temporalities converge – a space where the focus is not solely on the outcome, but on the ongoing, living process of creation. It has always been a place where time, history, and community meet. Here, what is past and what is yet to come find one another in a collective moment. Ensaio geral offers a space to reopen the theater, not with forms already written into its history, but with those once left out of its book. It is the inauguration of a theater yet to come.

Benjamin Seroussi is a São Paulo-based curator, editor, and cultural manager. He works as artistic director of the Casa do Povo, a Jewish Brazilian autonomous art space.

Daniel Blanga Gubbay is a curator in performing arts and a writer. Since 2018, he has been part of the artistic board of Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels.

Act I with Marcelo Evelin

The beat begins low. A single skin touched, a murmur of friction, then another, and another. Soon, a collective pulse emerges – syncopated, insistent, impossible to ignore. Batucada, in Marcelo Evelin’s hands, is not simply rhythm. It is a gathering, a summoning, a corporeal insistence that refuses silence. It begins in the dark – inside the TAIB, the underground theatre of Casa do Povo, its walls still absorbing the echoes of past voices – before spilling outward, in a movement that is both choreographic and political. This inaugural event marks the opening of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo’s program at Casa do Povo, and also reopens the TAIB with a gesture that is anything but contained. Born in Teresina, Piauí, Marcelo Evelin is one of Brazil’s most vital and internationally resonant choreographers. His work weaves together performance, activism, and collective practice, often departing from the body as a site of social inscription and resistance. In Batucada, created in 2014 and presented across the globe since, Evelin orchestrates not a fixed piece, but a living proposition: an accumulation of rhythms, presences, and gestures that build toward disobedience.

Batucada, 2014. Documentation of the creative process for the performance at Casa do Povo, São Paulo. Photo: Sergio Caddah.

There is no script, no hierarchy. Instead, Batucada offers a porous score, activated anew by each group of fifty local participants who perform it. The drums – sometimes actual, sometimes mimed with hands, feet, bodies – become weapons of joy and refusal. The performance grows not through spectacle but contagion: it invites the audience to listen not only with their ears but with their breath, their proximity to others. What begins as an accumulation of beats in the enclosed darkness of the theatre soon bursts into the open air. Batucada rejects the theatre as enclosure; it proposes the theatre not as refuge from the world but as its resonating chamber. The city does not remain on the other side of the door – it is the performance’s continuation, its necessary horizon.

Though Evelin conducted workshops at Casa do Povo when starting to work on Batucada over a decade ago, Batucada has never been performed in São Paulo until now. Its arrival is both return and rupture. Inaugurating this Bienal program with Batucada is a commitment. A refusal to begin quietly. In this encounter between Marcelo Evelin, Casa do Povo, and São Paulo’s own bodies and beats, Batucada becomes not just a performance, but a re-beginning.

Benjamin Seroussi and Daniel Blanga Gubbay

Act II with Boxe Autônomo and Dorothée Munyaneza

Boxing has always been more than fists. In the hands of Dorothée Munyaneza and Boxe Autônomo, it becomes a method of listening, a language for what goes unspoken, a way of being together in tension and care. This shared evening brings into dialogue two distinct yet resonant practices – one emerging from the diasporic poetics of the stage, the other from the everyday pedagogy of Casa do Povo.

At the center is Version(s) (2025), a work by Rwandan-British artist Dorothée Munyaneza, developed in conversation with Christian Nka, a former boxer from the northern outskirts of Marseille, and musician Ben LaMar Gay, from Chicago. Part portrait, part invocation, the piece navigates the charged space between survival and transmission. In the ring, in movement, Munyaneza searches for what history didn’t record: the gestures passed down in silence, the knowledge carried in muscle memory, the contradictions of masculinity forged under pressure. The fight is not re-enacted –it is dismantled, repurposed, held with care.

, 2025.

Version(s)

Documentation of the creative residency at the Maison de la Danse de Lyon. Photo: Maya Mihindou.

In Version(s), the ring becomes a stage, but at Casa do Povo, the inverse has already happened. Since 2016, Boxe Autônomo has turned the cultural centre into an antifascist gym. Born out of a desire to reclaim boxing from its machismo and institutionalization, Boxe Autônomo grew out of wandering classes in squats and favelas, and over time has become a living part of Casa do Povo’s architecture – daily sessions folding seamlessly into the building’s rhythm, echoing its history of radical pedagogy and collective practice. The ring becomes a democratic space: open, porous, and self-managed; a space where bodies can renegotiate their place.

The encounter with Munyaneza does not seek to fuse these practices, but to hold them side by side, to see what resonates in the shared silence before a movement, in the exhale after contact. It unfolds through some days of the workshop and two nights in which Version(s) will be presented in a special setting, contaminated by Boxe Autônomo, and followed by a shared dialogue. Boxing, so often aligned with domination, is transformed into something else: a terrain for relation, rupture, and repair. Between Marseille’s outskirts and the São Paulo downtown neighborhood Bom Retiro, between art and daily practice, between personal history and collective reimagining.

Benjamin Seroussi and Daniel Blanga Gubbay

Photo: Gustavo Moita.

Boxe Autônomo. Photo: Pérola Dutra.

Act III with Alexandre Paulikevitch and MEXA

A shoulder turns, deliberate; a glance – held, then broken. The cabaret begins not with fanfare, but with a shift in attention: to the body, to its codes, to its refusal to stay in line. Often overlooked as not serious enough, cabaret historically became the theatrical site of dissidence, of the exploration of gender, and of what could not be otherwise said. At Casa do Povo, cabaret carries its own lineage – rooted not only in the house’s history of political theatre but also in Jewish diasporic traditions in which satire, song, and the stage became forms of survival and critique. In a unique encounter, Alexandre Paulikevitch and MEXA bring their contemporary work on cabaret, keeping the energy of this form as something that doesn’t seduce so much as unsettle.

Paulikevitch, born and based in Beirut, is one of the few male artists working in the tradition of baladi –often reduced through a colonial lens as “belly dance” – and he does so as an act of political reclamation. His dance is slow, sinuous, alert to the gaze that tries to fix it. Through hips, breath, and repetition, Paulikevitch undoes the layers of orientalism and homophobia that have long sought to discipline his form.

Baladi ya wad, 2015. Documentation of the cabaret dance performance. Photo: Tarek Moukadem.

Elghaa, 2013. Documentation of the dance performance.

Photo: Tanya Traboulsi.

His work carves space for softness as strategy, sensuality as resistance, and ambiguity as truth. To watch him is to feel how deeply the archive of the body runs – and how much must be danced out of it.

Emerging from the streets and shelters of São Paulo, MEXA is a collective forged in urgency. Researching the possibilities of creating fictions from its own identity, MEXA is composed mostly of trans and queer people and has been shaped by the Brazilian state’s neglect and violence. MEXA has been creating theatrical forms in the space of Casa do Povo, and while traveling the world. By singing, lip-syncing, performing scenes and selves, they created loud and unruly re-elaborations of personal and collective myths.

In this project conceived for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, as a result of a shared residency, Paulikevitch and MEXA open two nights intertwining their practices and narratives: bodies turn away, or insist on being seen; identities become choreographies – improvised, relational – with the sense that the theatre must always remain unfinished – porous to desire, to the noise of the present. Together, they reclaim the cabaret as a form born at the edge of institutions, always too loud, too queer, too excessive. With them, cabaret becomes what it has always threatened to be: a rehearsal for another way of being together.

Benjamin Seroussi and Daniel Blanga Gubbay

A última ceia [The Last Supper], 2024. Digital photograph. Photo: Laysa Elias.

Poperópera transatlântica, 2023. Performance, 90’. Photo: Marcelo Mudou.

Tributary: Stream of Images / Imaginaries La Cinémathèque Afrique

The concept of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo proposes to think and perceive the world from the vantage point and through the prism of Brazil – its histories, landscapes, philosophies, mythologies, and complexities. Brazil, as a fictional and symbolic construct, emerges as a convergence of many worlds and their tangents. The physical and philosophical space of the estuary is adopted as a metaphor for this edition of the Bienal, evoking a cultural condition shaped through encounters, negotiations, and exchanges across diverse zones of influence. These processes have given rise to techniques and themes that transcend notions of ethnicity and nationality.

In the context of the Saison BrésilFrance 2025 and in collaboration with La Cinémathèque Afrique, Stream of Images / Imaginaries focuses on the shared history between Brazil, the Caribbean, and Africa and how this cross-continental sphere of mutual influence keeps resonating in the cultural practices and the imaginaries of the communities in these regions until today. A selection committee of six specialists for moving image practices in Brazil, the Caribbean, and North and West Africa, each with their specialty, such as Pan African narratives, archival film, or queer voices, have collectively developed a film program that brings contemporary and historical works

in dialogue with each other in four chapters: Territory and Sovereignty, What Remains of Us, Bodies in Motion: Sound, Struggle, and Social Space, and Once Upon a Time in the Future. The films highlight the relationship between people and territory, explore how fragments of histories and memories have persevered over generations and manifest in daily gestures and rituals, and show how the body becomes both language and battleground.

The four thematic programs will be presented alternately at the Pavilion’s auditorium on Sundays, and, on a monthly basis, one screening will be complemented by one round-table conversation with members of the selection committee and some of the respective filmmakers. Parallel to the presentation at the Bienal de São Paulo and in the framework of the Saison Brésil-France 2025, the film program will also be presented at La Friche la Belle de Mai (Marseille) and is afterwards meant to travel to several places on the African continent and the Caribbean. There, it will be presented too in an extended form, framed by talks with contributing artists and representatives of the selection committee.

Selection committee: Aude Christel Mgba, Débora Butruce, Elisabeth Gustave, Heitor Augusto, Jihan El-Tahri, and June Givanni.

Stream of Images / Imaginaries has been supported by the Ministry of Foreign Relations / Instituto Guimarães Rosa, the Embassy of France in Brazil, and the Institut français as part of the Saison France-Brésil.

Apparitions

With Apparitions, the 36th Bienal de São Paulo introduces a new format that is both digital and site-specific, further expanding its reach beyond the spatial and temporal boundaries of the main exhibition at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion. In collaboration with WAVA – a nonprofit augmented exhibition platform – works exhibited in Brazil will be reimagined as digital twins, extensions, or echoes, and will appear throughout selected sites worldwide.

The locations, chosen by the artists and the curatorial team, will anchor the pieces in context-specific environments, allowing local audiences to engage with the works through the WAVA app, blending virtual content with real-world settings. While this hybrid format opens up new possibilities for accessibility, participation, and local resonance, it also invites reflection on the evolving nature of digital connectivity and the dissolving boundaries between the virtual and the real in everyday public spaces.

Ben Livne Weitzman is a curator and writer based in Frankfurt. He is CEO and co-founder of WAVA, curator of the Crespo Foundation’s Glenkeen Garden artist-in-residence program in West Cork, and serves as editor-at-large at PASSE-AVANT, an online magazine for contemporary art.

Fundação Bienal de São Paulo

Founder Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho · 1898-1977 · chairman emeritus

Governing Board

Eduardo Saron · president

Ana Helena Godoy Pereira de Almeida Pires · vice president

Lifetime Members

Adolpho Leirner

Beno Suchodolski

Carlos Francisco Bandeira Lins

Cesar Giobbi

Elizabeth Machado

Jens Olesen

Julio Landmann

Marcos Arbaitman

Maria Ignez Corrêa da Costa Barbosa

Pedro Aranha Corrêa do Lago

Pedro Paulo de Sena Madureira

Roberto Muylaert

Rubens José Mattos Cunha Lima

Members

Adrienne Senna Jobim

Alberto Emmanuel Whitaker

Alfredo Egydio Setubal

Ana Helena Godoy Pereira de Almeida Pires

Angelo Andrea Matarazzo

Beatriz Yunes Guarita

Camila Appel

Carlos Alberto Frederico

Carlos Augusto Calil

Carlos Jereissati

Célia Kochen Parnes

Claudio Thomaz Lobo Sonder

Daniela Montingelli Villela

Eduardo Saron

Fábio Magalhães

Felippe Crescenti

Flavia Buarque de Almeida

Flávia Cipovicci Berenguer

Flavia Regina de Souza Oliveira

Flávio Moura

Francisco Alambert

Heitor Martins

Isay Weinfeld

Jeane Mike Tsutsui

Joaquim de Arruda Falcão Neto

José Olympio da Veiga Pereira

Kelly de Amorim

Ligia Fonseca Ferreira

Lucio Gomes Machado

Luis Terepins

Luiz Galina

Maguy Etlin · on leave

Manoela Queiroz Bacelar

Marcelo Mattos Araujo

Mariana Teixeira de Carvalho

Miguel Setas

Miguel Wady Chaia

Neide Helena de Moraes

Nina da Hora

Octavio de Barros

Rodrigo Bresser Pereira

Rosiane Pecora

Sérgio Spinelli Silva Jr.

Susana Leirner Steinbruch

Tito Enrique da Silva Neto

Audit Board

Edna Sousa de Holanda

Flávio Moura

Octavio Manoel Rodrigues de Barros

International Advisory Board

Frances Reynolds · president

Ana Helena Godoy Pereira de Almeida Pires · vice president

Andrea de Botton Dreesmann, Quinten

Dreesmann

Barbara Sobel

Caterina Stewart

Catherine Petitgas

Flávia Abubakir, Frank Abubakir

Laurie Ziegler

Mélanie Berghmans

Miwa Taguchi-Sugiyama

Pamela J. Joyner

Paula Macedo Weiss, Daniel Weiss

Sandra Hegedüs

Vanessa Tubino

Board of Directors

Andrea Pinheiro · president

Maguy Etlin · first vice president

Luiz Lara · second vice president

Ana Paula Martinez

Francisco Pinheiro Guimarães

Maria Rita Drummond

Ricardo Diniz

Roberto Otero

Solange Sobral

Team

Superintendencies

Antonio Thomaz Lessa Garcia Junior · chief operating officer

Felipe Isola · chief projects officer

Joaquim Millan · chief projects officer

Caroline Carrion · chief communications officer

Irina Cypel · chief institutional relations and partnerships officer

Executive Superintendency assistants

Beatriz Reiter Santos · executive assistant

Marcella Batista · administrative assistant

Projects Superintendency coordinators

Bernard Lemos Tjabbes

Dorinha Santos

Marina Scaramuzza producers

Ariel Rosa Grininger

Camilla Ayla · art conservation advisor

Carolina da Costa Angelo

Nuno Holanda Sá do Espírito Santo

Tatiana Oliveira de Farias assistants

Fabiana Paulucci

Ziza Rovigatti

Communications Superintendency coordinator

Rafael Falasco · editorial advisors

Adriano Campos · design

Eduardo Lirani · graphic production

Fernando Pereira · press office

Francisco Belle Bresolin · digital projects and documentation

Julia Bolliger Murari · social media

Luciana Araujo Marques · editorial

Nina Nunes · design assistant

Marina Fonseca · social media apprentice

Victória Pracedino

Institutional Relations and Partnerships Superintendency advisors

Luciana Raele

Raquel Silva

Victória Bayma

Viviane Teixeira assistants

André Massena

Jefferson Faria

Laura Caldas

Education manager

Simone Lopes de Lira coordinator

Danilo Pera advisors

André Leitão

Renato Lopes

Tailicie Nascimento assistants

Gabri Gregório Floriano

Giovanna Endrigo

Júlia Iwanaga

Leonardo Venâncio Miranda

Vinícius Massimino apprentice

Lincon Amaral

Bienal Archive manager

Leno Veras coordinators

Antonio Paulo Carretta

Marcele Souto Yakabi assistants

Ana Helena Grizotto Custódio

Anna Beatriz Corrêa Bortoletto

Gislene Sales

Gustavo Paes

Thais Ferreira Dias apprentices

Ilana Alionço

Manoel Assis

Financial and Administrative

Finances

manager

Amarildo Firmino Gomes coordinator

Edson Pereira de Carvalho advisor

Fábio Kato assistant

Silvia Andrade Simões Branco

Materials and Property manager

Valdomiro Rodrigues da Silva Neto coordinators

Larissa Di Ciero Ferradas · materials and property

Vinícius Robson da Silva Araújo · purchasing assistants

Angélica de Oliveira Divino

Daniel Pereira

Sergio Faria Lima

Victor Senciel

Wagner Pereira de Andrade auxiliary

Isabela Cardoso apprentice

Lucas Galhardo advisory / Sinsmel Engenharia

Manoel Lindolfo cleaning services / Verzani & Sandrini

Claudia Rodrigues

Isabel Rodrigues Ferreira

Maria Eliana do Nascimento de Lisboa

Rosana Celia de Souza

Rosangela Silveira Jeronimo firefighters / Alpha Secure

Davidson Maninuc de Lima

Denier Moises Ramos

Leandro Silva Meira Corelli

Ricardo de Azevedo Santos front desk / Megavig

Benedita Aparecida da Silva

Celiane Gomes Cardoso

Cicero Quelis da Silva

Cleidston de Oliveira Silva

Harrisson Crislle Lima dos Santos

Pedro Luiz Januário

maintenance / Verman Engenharia

Manutenção

Alexandro Pedreira da Silva

Cleber Silva de Souza

Edilson de Carvalho Sousa

João Santana de Souza

motorcycle courier / Brasil Express

Vanderson Costa Nery

pantry support / Verzani & Sandrini

Selma Francisca de Sousa Silva reception / Megavig

Gabriele Pires

Planning and Operations advisors

Rone Amabile

Vera Lucia Kogan

Human Resources coordinators

Andréa Moreira · human resources

Higor Tocchio · payroll and personnel department assistants

Matheus Andrade Sartori

Patricia Fernandes

Information Technology consultants

Ricardo Bellucci

Júlio Coelho

Matheus Lourenço assistant

Jhones Alves do Nascimento

36th Bienal de São Paulo –

Not All Travellers Walk Roads –

Of Humanity as Practice

Conceptual Team

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung · chief curator

Alya Sebti, Anna Roberta Goetz, Thiago de Paula Souza · co-curators

Keyna Eleison · co-curator at large

Henriette Gallus · strategy and communications advisor

André Pitol, Leonardo Matsuhei · curatorial assistants

Architecture and Exhibition Design

Gisele de Paula, Tiago Guimarães

Alexandra Souza, Júlia Marquez, Santiago Rid

· architectural assistance

Agence Clémence Farrell · initial architectural advisory

Visual Identity

Studio Yukiko

Projects and Production

Acoustic Advisory

Sresnewsky Consultoria Ltda

Assembly coordination

Alexandre Cruz

Arão Nunes

Mauro Amorim

Rodolfo Martins team

Alexandre Gomes

André Cruz

Ania Sanchez Valle

Bruno Amarantes Abreu de Lima

Cristian Santander

Diego Mauricio Rossi

Edison de Freitas Rocha Filho

Eloi Salvador

Elton Hipólito

Gabriel Rosa

Geraldo Peixoto

Gustavo Lemes Salomão

Hebert Kendy Zamour

Hélio Bartsch

Ítalo Douglas

Jaider Laerdson da Silva Miranda

Juan Lucas Rossi

Luciano Jorge Macovescy

Luis Enrique Silvestre Guerra

Pedro de Castro Layus

Rafael Freire

Raphael Rodrigues de Souza

Rejane Mitiko Nagatomo

Rhaldex Junior

Rodrigo Pasarello

Thiago Strassalano

Tomas Jefferson Silva da Cruz

Vinicius de Assis assistance

Leny Silva

Audiovisual Advisory

Patrícia Mesquita – MIT Arte

Conservation coordination

Patrícia Guimarães dos Reis team

Alice Quintella Tischer

Daniel Zuim Mussi

Fabiana Oda

Flávia Baiochi Santos

Gisele Guedes

Thalita Noce

Thaís Ramos Carvalhais

Valerie Midori Koga Takeda

Fine Arts Insurance

Chubb Seguros Brasil S.A.

Sonia Sassi · GECO Corretora de Seguros Ltda

Lighting

Anna Turra Lighting Design · lighting design team

Anna Turra

Camila Jordão

Lucas Cavalcante

Giullia Gonçalves

Andressa Pacheco

equipment and installation

Belight

Public Program Production

Helena Prado

Scenography

Mauro Coelho · Cinestand

Adão Siqueira · Metro Cenografia

Transportation Logistics

Nilson Lopes · national

Waiver Arts · international

Communications and Editorial

Advertising Agency

Africa Creative

AV Content and Photographic Documentation

Bruno Fernandes

Duma Hub de Inovação Criativa e Produção

Artística

João Gabriel Hidalgo

Levi Fanan

Martin Zenorini

Design assistance

Aninha de Carvalho Price

Tamara Lichtenstein

Editorial

Bruno Rodrigues · editorial assistance

Cristina Fino · editorial coordination of the educational publications #3 and #4

Deborah Moreira · editorial assistance

Tatiana Allegro · text editing – catalog and reader

Press Office

Index · national

Sam Talbot · international

Voices Bienal

Adriana Coelho Silva

Ana Carolina Ralston

Alex Atala

Ana Hikari

Astrid Fontenelle

Bárbara Brito

Benedita Casé Zerbini

Camila Fremder

Dandara Queiroz

Djamila Ribeiro

Dione Assis

Didi Wagner

Dudu Bertholini

Fafá de Belém

Fernanda Cortez

Giovanni Bianco

Humberto Carrão

Isadora Cruz

Kevin David

Laís Franklin

Luanda Vieira

Luiza Adas

Luedji Luna

Mauricio Arruda

Maria Carolina Casati

Marina Person

Memphis Depay

Maria Ribeiro

Mel Duarte

Rachel Maia

Regina Casé

Rita Carreira

Stefano Carta

Stephanie Ribeiro

Thai de Melo Bufrem

Taís Araújo

Txai Suruí

Zeca Camargo

Xênia França

Website

Fluxo · development

Laura Trigo · content assistance

Institutional Relations and Partnerships

Content Creation and Management for Digital Channels

Motiv Design

Events Production

Patrícia Galvão

Institutional Partnerships

Contemporâneo Showroom

Kimi Nii

Livraria da Travessa

Production Assistance

Fabiana Farias

Patrícia Rabello

Varanda Bienal Architecture

Denis Ferri Arquiteto

Travel Agency

Latitudes Viagens de Conhecimento

Education

Accessibility Advisory

Mais Diferenças

Brazilian Sign Language Interpretation

AHU Acessibilidade Humanista

Booking and Check-in Tool

Hous 360

Materials and Property

Advisory and Training

Lord Assessoria em Eventos

Ambulance and Medical Station

Premium Serviços Médicos LTDA. ME

Civil Firefighter

Local Serviços especializados LTDA. ME

Cleaning and Conservation

Tia Limpeza e Eventos LTDA

Electrical Distribution

AGR Elétrica LTDA

Generator Location

CAM Energy Locação de Equipamentos LTDA

Operations

Denis Jordão · coordination

Kleber Almeida Gomes · supervision

Security

Megavig Segurança e Vigilância LTDA

Security Projects Advisory

Asegm Construção LTDA

Invocations

Marrakech – Nov. 14-15, 2024

LE 18 · co-convener

Laila Hida · partner venue direction

Youssef Sebti · local production

Zora El Hajji · local press office

Mahacine Mokdad, Sofian Amly, Hamza

Morchid, Youssef Boumbarek · AV content and photographic documentation

Embaixada do Brasil em Rabat / Instituto

Guimarães Rosa · Ministério das Relações

Exteriores – local support

Guadeloupe – Dec. 5-7, 2024

Lafabri’K · co-convener

Marie-Laure Poitout · partner venue presidency

Léna Blou · partner venue direction

Hellen Rugard · local production

Annik Benjamin · simultaneous translation

Cédric Marcellin, Philippe Hurgon · AV content and photographic documentation

Institut Français; Embaixada do Brasil em Paris / Instituto Guimarães Rosa · Ministério das Relações Exteriores · local support

Zanzibar – Feb. 11-13, 2025

Bernard Ntahondi · co-convener

Dhow Countries Music Academy (DCMA) · partner institution

Halda Alkanaan · partner institution direction

Thureiya Saleh · local production

Raymond Peter, Alex Marcel · sound engineering

William Chazega Nkobi, Habibu Ramadhani

Diliwa · simultaneous translation

Aden Rajab Said, Ally Nassor, Arafat Khamis

Moh’d, Caroline-Jamie Dandu, Gulaam

Abdullah, Venance Leonard, Waleed Khamis

Mohammed · AV content and photographic documentation

YAS, Fondation H, Embaixada do Brasil em Dar es Salaam / InstitutoGuimarães Rosa · Ministério das Relações Exteriores · local support

Tokyo – Apr. 12-14, 2025

Andrew Maerkle, Kanako Sugiyama · co-convener

The 5th Floor; Sogetsu Kaikan; The University of Tokyo (with ACUT) · venues

Jordan A. Y. Smith · poetry program advising Tomoya Iwata · local production

Yoshiko Kurata · local press office

Wataru Shoji · sound engineering

Art Translators Collective · simultaneous translation

Kenji Agata, Naoki Takehisa, Sora Shirai, Takuma Osugi, Yoshikatsu Hirayama · AV content and photographic documentation

Embaixada do Brasil em Tóquio / Instituto

Guimarães Rosa · Ministério das Relações, Exteriores; Art Center, The University of Tokyo (ACUT) · local support

Acknowledgements

Individuals

Acácio Luiz Costa

Ainsley Kass

Aisha Amrin

Akio Aoki

Allison Berg

Aloysius Forsuh Tih

Amalia Spinardi & Roberto Thompson

Ana Celia Biondi

Ana Paula Brasil

Ana Varella

Andrea & Nicholas Kukrika

Arnold Antonin

Brigitte Caland

Bruna Simões Pessoa de Queiroz

Caio Luiz de Carvalho

Catherine Petitgas

Daniella Conceição Mattos Araújo

David Jesus de Almeida

Edir Ramos de Andrade

Edmondo Zanolini

Eduardo de Almeida Navarro

Edward Rawson

Ericka Simony Baihé dos Santos

Esther Constantino

Felipe Dmab

Fred Kachar

Gabriel Rett

Ghita Melehi Sollazzo

Gibran Mir

Giovanni Antonio R. Barile

Hardoz Khadija

Hena Lee

Henilton Parente de Menezes

Hervé Sabin

Iara Cristina Camargo

Ivanilson Machado

Jane Hait

Jaqueline Santiago

Jessica Socorro

Jim Gray

João Camargo

Johnny Saad

José Eduardo Cintra Laloni

Kamal Melehi

Lêo Pedrosa

Leslie Matlaisane

Louloua Melehi

Luis Felipe Leite

Luiza Bernardes

Manzar Feres

Marc Pottier

Marcelo Lopes

Márcia Fortes

Marco Antonio Nakata

Marcus A. Nielsen

Margareth Menezes

Margareth Telles

Maria Angela de Jesus

Maria Claudia Marchetti

Berna Petrarca de Araujo

Maria Cristina Ciampolini de Brito

Maria Ignez Correa C. Barbosa

Mariana Macedo

Marie Andre Etienne

Martin Escobari

Mehak Vieira

Mingus Smith

Moisés Lima

Mujah Maraini-Melehi

Neide Helena de Moraes

Newton Simões Filho

Nighat Mir

Nour Melehi

Paulo Petrarca Araujo

Paulo Saad Jafet

Pedro Barbosa

Pedro Ivo Silva

Philipp von Matt & Leiko Ikemura

Philippe Caland

Pierre Caland

Preston Linck

Rafael Azzi

Rafael Moraes

Rajaa Benchemsi Belkahia

Ricardo Pessoa de Queiroz Filho

Ricardo Saad

Rodney Saint-Éloi

Rodolfo Rodrigues C Pelitz

Rodrigo Cobra

Ronan Grossiat

Rui Villela Ferreira

Sacha Bowling

Sarah Adamson

Sarina Tang

Sergio Gordilho

Sergio Lulia Jacob

Seth Riskin

Soulaimane Belhassan Alaoui

Stephanie Habrich

Teresa Carvalho

Valeria Baronchelli

Youssef Melehi

Yvette Mutumba

Institutions and companies

A&L Berg Foundation

Acervo Histórico da Discoteca

Oneyda Alvarenga – Centro Cultural São Paulo

Agência Nacional do Cinema –Ancine

Almeida & Dale

Andrew Kreps Gallery

Arnaud Lefebvre Gallery

Arnold Antonin Films

Art Center, University of Tokyo

Associação Beneficente Santa Fé

Barjeel Art Foundation

Behring Foundation

BrazilFoundation

British Council

CARA – Center for Art Research and Alliances

Casa Hoffman

Casa Líquida

Catavento Cultural e Educacional

Central Fine

Centro Afro Carioca de Cinema

Centro Cultural Coreano

Centro de Educação Tecnológica

Centro Paula Souza, Governo do Estado de São Paulo: CPS – CETEC Capacitações –

Coordenação de Projetos –Artes Ensino Médio

Centro Universitário Belas Artes de São Paulo

Cinémathèque Afrique

Ck Amorim Comércio de Artefatos de Metais

CNN

Coleção moraes-barbosa

Collection Mitra GobervilleHananeh

Consulado-Geral da República

Popular da China em São Paulo

Consulado-Geral do Reino da Bélgica em São Paulo

Consulate General and Promotion Center in São Paolo Argentine Republic

Consulate General of Brazil in Montreal

Cristina Picazo – CHRUM

Cultura Artística

Dutch Consulate-General in São Paulo

Effie Gallery

El-Saieh Gallery

Embaixada da Finlândia no Brasil

Embaixada da República da Colômbia no Brasil

Embaixada do Brasil em Harare

Embaixada do Brasil em Maputo

Embaixada do Brasil na França

Embaixada do Brasil no Japão

Embaixada do Brasil no Marrocos

Embaixada do Brasil no México

Embaixada do Reino da Dinamarca no Brasil

Embaixada Real da Noruega em Brasília

Embassy of Brazil in Dar es Salaam

Embassy of Brazil to China

Embassy of Sweden Brasília, Brasil

Escola de Comunicação e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo

Estate Ferlov Mancoba

Eugenio López – Fundación Jumex

Fas Collection

Filmicca

Folha de S.Paulo

Fondation Alliances

Fondation H

Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel

Frederik Schampers / Casa Onze

Fundação Bienal MoAC Biss

Fundação Nacional de Artes –Funarte

Fundação Padre Anchieta

Galeria Verve

Galeria Yehudi Hollander-Pappi

Galerie Barbara Thumm

Galerie Buchholz

Galerie Cécile Fakhoury

Galleria Continua

Globo

Goethe-Institut São Paulo

Grupo Estado

Hamid Zénati Estate

Hauser & Wirth

Helloo

Hochschule für Bildende Künste–Städelschule

ifa - Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen

Institut français

Instituto Arte na Escola

Instituto Brasileiro de Museus –Ibram

Instituto Cervantes de São Paulo

Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional – Iphan

Instituto Guimarães Rosa

Instituto Inhotim

Instituto Italiano di Cultura de São Paulo

Instituto Sacatar

Instituto Serrinha

International Biennial Association

JCDecaux Brasil

La Friche la Belle de Mai

Lima Galeria

Lodos Gallery

Loft Art Gallery

Mendes Wood DM

Ministério da Cultura

Ministério da Educação

Ministério da Igualdade Racial

Ministério das Relações Exteriores

Ministério do Meio Ambiente

Ministério dos Direitos Humanos e da Cidadania

Mitre Galeria

Mondriaan Fund

MT Projetos

Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo –MAC USP

Museu de Arte do Rio – MAR

National Gallery of Zimbabwe

neugerriemschneider

Nicodim Gallery

Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA)

OH Gallery

Paula Cooper Gallery

Paulo Darzé Galeria

Pivô Arte e Pesquisa

POIESIS – Instituto de Apoio à Cultura, à Língua e à Literatura

Portas Vilaseca

Preta Ação

Pro Helvetia

Pró-Reitoria de Inclusão e Pertencimento da Universidade de São Paulo

Projeto Sociocultural Bateria 013

Renova BR

Richard Saltoun Gallery

Roberts Projects

Royal Air Maroc

Santa Marcelina – Orquestra do Theatro São Pedro

Secretaria de Economia Criativa e Fomento Cultural

Secretaria de Formação, Livro e Leitura

Secretaria Estadual de Educação de São Paulo

Secretaria Municipal de Cultura e Economia Criativa de São Paulo, e os Programas:

Projeto Jovem Monitor

Cultural, Escolas Municipais de Iniciação Artística, Programa de Iniciação Artística para a Primeira Infância, Programa de Iniciação Artística, Vocacional, Rede Daora

Secretaria Municipal de Educação de São Paulo: Coordenadoria Pedagógica – COPED, Divisão do Sistema de Formação de Educadores da Rede Municipal de Ensino de São Paulo

Selebe Yoon

Semiose Gallery

STARS Gallery

Stevenson Gallery

Take Ninagawa

The Frank Bowling Foundation

The Imran Mir Art Foundation

Tomm El-Saieh

Translocal Enterprise RM C

TV Cultura

Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho”

Université Paris-Sorbonne

Usina de Arte

Valor Econômico

Villa Arson

Villa Medici

West Baffin Cooperative

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

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SPONSORSHIP

OFFICIAL MOBILITY

OFFICIAL CARRIER

OFFICIAL AGENCY

INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

Publication credits

Published in Portuguese and English by

Fundação Bienal de São Paulo

Edited by

Conceptual team and Fundação Bienal de São Paulo

Editorial coordination

Fundação Bienal de São Paulo

Design Studio Yukiko

Layout

Aninha de Carvalho Price

Text editing and proofreading

Tatiana Allegro

Editorial assistance

Deborah Moreira

Copyediting

Bruno Rodrigues

Livia Lima

Translation

Gabriel Bogossian

Mariana Nacif Mendes

Nicolas Brandão

Philip Somervell

Rafael Falasco

Sergio Maciel

Sylvia Monasterios

Font families

Arizona and Camera Plain by Dinamo

Graphic production Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and Marcia Signorini

Printing Ipsis

ISBN 978-85-85298-93-7

The title of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Not All Travellers Walk Roads, is made up of verses by the writer Conceição Evaristo

© Publication Copyright: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo. All rights reserved. Images and texts reproduced in this publication were granted by permission from the artists, photographers, writers or their legal representatives, and are protected by law and licence agreements. Any use is prohibited without the permission of the Bienal de São Paulo, the authors, the artists and the photographers. All efforts have been made to find the copyright owners of materials reproduced here. We will be happy to correct any omission in case it comes to our knowledge. All photos: courtesy of the artists or their estates, unless otherwise noted. This catalog was originally published in Portuguese and English in August 2025. A supplementary print run with updates was issued in September of the same year.

Dados Internacionais de Catalogação na Publicação (CIP) (Câmara Brasileira do Livro, SP, Brasil)

36th Bienal de São Paulo : not all travellers walk roads : of humanity as practice / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo; curadoria Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. -São Paulo : Bienal de São Paulo, 2025.

Vários autores.

ISBN 978-85-85298-93-7

1. Artes – Exposições – Catálogos

2. Arte – São Paulo (SP) – Exposições

3. Bienal de São Paulo (SP)

I. Fundação Bienal de São Paulo.

II. Ndikung, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng.

25-287833

Índices para catálogo sistemático:

1. Bienais de arte : São Paulo : Cidade 709.8161

2. São Paulo : Cidade : Bienais de arte 709.8161

Eliete Marques da Silva - Bibliotecária – CRB-8/9380

CDD-709.8161

Fundação Bienal de São Paulo

Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo – Parque Ibirapuera

Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral – Moema 04094-050 / São Paulo – SP bienal.org.br

Ministry of Culture, Government of the State of São Paulo, through the Secretariat of Culture, Creative Economy and Industry, Municipal Secretariat of Culture and Creative Economy of the City of São Paulo, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and Itaú present