São Paulo Art Biennial reclaims the power of direct contact with artworks

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Curators of the exhibition’s 34th edition intend to use the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, at Ibirapuera Park, from September to December, and ensure that it is possible to offer a safe visit. ‘It’s dark but I sing’, verse by poet Thiago de Mello, names the biennial that turns 70.

“It’s dark but I sing.” The 34th São Paulo International Biennial of Art, which intends to use the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion at Ibirapuera Park with a large group exhibition from September 4 to December 5 this year, has no theme. The verse that gives it its name is one of Amazonian poet Thiago de Mello, who turns 95 in 2021, and that, for the Biennial’ of Art’s curators, is a reflection of the moment – of global health, political and social crisis – in which people turn to art hoping for tomorrow.

“This title had a concreteness and communicated itself without us having to explain it to artists from all over the world. Now it is something that is part of even the way people say good morning to each other and ask each other if everything is okay. It reflects this constant awareness that we are in this dark moment,” Paulo Miyada, deputy curator of the contemporary art event, explained.

The 34th Biennial – which would have originally taken place in 2020 – will feature 91 artists (including two duos and a collective) from 39 countries, who have produced works exclusively for the exhibition. The list of participants includes 9 artists from native peoples from several parts of the world, among them the Brazilian Jaider Esbell, from the Makuxi ethnic group, who have the largest representation in the Biennial’s 70-year history.

Starting in February 2020, with a solo show by artist Ximena Garrido-Lecca, this edition was born with the proposal of unfolding in space and time, with a series of shows and performances over the months, in 25 of the city’s cultural institutions, which would culminate in the great exhibition in the pavilion.

Therefore, the changes in the event’s design imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic were “superficial,” as explained by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, general curator. “We wanted to emphasize and expose the process of building the exhibition and show the public how fundamental the context in which a work of art is embedded is for the understanding of that work. That’s why we don’t have a theme. We started from a methodology of the exhibition construction process as something inseparable from the exhibition itself,” he says, celebrating the fact that each institution has managed to adapt its program – mainly digitally – to reach a diversity of audiences that characterizes the São Paulo Biennial.

The curators concede that for the first time they considered the possibility of making a totally online edition of the Art Biennial, but experiences such as the show Vento, which brought together works by 21 artists between November and December 2020, serving as a kind of index of the great exhibition, showed that it is possible to open the pavilion for public visits. “There is a social, cultural, political and human dimension implied in the possibility of coming into direct contact with works of art that is irreplaceable. We know that we are not in the aftermath of the pandemic, much less in the aftermath of a social and political crisis, but when this contact is possible with safety and care for all involved, it has a crucial role,” Miyada comments.

The curators point out that, unlike other exhibitions, the biennial has, in its essence, the dimension of a cultural event, something that transcends the scope of contemporary art. That is perhaps why the event is a historical stage for political protests, paricularly on opening days.

In 2016, for example, members of Opavivará artistic group marched in protest against then-President Michel Temer, after Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, crying “out, Temer.” Two years later, the cries of “coup plotters, fascists, you shall not pass” echoed again in the pavilion.

This platform for social, cultural, and political manifestation is celebrated by Visconti: “You don’t see spontaneous interventions in most contemporary art venues because maybe what is happening there is something merely interesting or that interests a relatively small audience. And these events arise in the biennial because it still fills a sphere of interest, people look, criticize, question and believe that this is something far beyond an exhibition.”

Miyada expects that the social detachment experienced due to the pandemic will make this experience even more vibrant. “Art venues like the biennial extend beyond the idea of fruition, they are part of citizen life, they are meeting places. The biennial’s political meaning does not lie exclusively in the works and in what the institution says or does not say, it has much to do with the collective use that social discourses make along with works,” he adds.

To encourage the creation of these discourses, one of the novelties this year is a fully digital catalog, with images and some texts and reflections by the artists that invite the public to explore the artistic languages and poetics that may (or may not) be presented from September on, without, however, dealing directly with the works in the Biennial.

It is a provocation to the audience’s intuition. The title of the publication, ‘tenteio’, comes from the text ‘A arte e ciência de empinar papagaio’, again by poet Thiago de Mello, who writes an essay on the ancestral practice of flying a kite. The attempt consists in pulling and quickly releasing the line, making the kite oscillate and test its weight, rising again. In a competition, the one who masters the movement can cut the opponent’s line. It is a dance in the air, but also a struggle. As well as art in the here and now.