Gabi On The Go: September 15 - São Paulo Art Biennial

We woke up with this view, from our hotel's 23rd floor.

No more rain.

Hotel Renaissance: https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/saobr-renaissance-sao-paulo-hotel/overview/

After a delicious breakfast at the hotel we anxiously headed to the reason why we decided to come to São Paulo in the first place: the 35th Bienal de Artes (Biennal of Arts of São Paulo).

Experimenting with the camera's timer.

As soon as you get in, you almost trip over the very first installation, a train track.

It invites you take on a journey through contemporary art of the 21 century - mostly.

Through the Choreographies of the Impossible!

FROM https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/sao-paulo-bienal-to-choreograph-the-impossible/

The São Paulo Bienal has revealed almost half of the 100 artists participating in its 35th edition from 6 September to 10 December 2023.

The biennial, titled Choreographies of the Impossible, is being curated by Diane Lima, Grada Kilomba, Hélio Menezes, and Manuel Borja-Villel.

They said their choice of the term choreography 'helps us reflect on how the idea of moving freely remains at the core of a neoliberal conception of freedom.'

Instead, they said they wanted to 'make room for a continuous dance which we can choreograph together, even in difference.'

FROM: https://35.bienal.org.br/en/fundacao-bienal-de-sao-paulo-anuncia-a-abertura-da-35a-bienal-de-sao-paulo-coreografias-do-impossivel/

The second oldest biennial in the world and the largest contemporary art event in the Southern Hemisphere and the Americas is now open. With 121 participants, the Bienal reveals new perspectives on the world based on the urgencies of current times;
The exhibition presents approximately 1,100 artworks of different mediums, spread over the 30,000 square meters of the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion in Ibirapuera Park, which has undergone accessibility adjustments and renovations to host the event.

It's hard to talk about these such amazing pieces of art, without being unfair to the rest of the art in the Bienal. The images and comments here are an extremely small portion of the gigantic exhibition.

We spent five hours appreciating most of the art work, but still it wasn't enough to see everything.

Artist: Denilson Baniwa

Installation: Kaá

FROM: https://35.bienal.org.br/en/audioguias/denilson-baniwa/

We are in the space dedicated to the work Kaá, a maize plantation of the Guarani people, one of the three that make up Baniwa’s project for this Bienal, called Kwema / Amanhecer [Dawn]. As he himself says, “the Baniwa people’s choreographies of survival and resistance since the beginning of time have taken the form of managing chaos and the end of the world […] Rebuilding themselves after mythological tragedies and contact with the whites, the Baniwa continue to dance and sing, despite the violence they have suffered and understanding all that has been lost or amputated from their culture, reorganizing and reinventing their practices. Including elements acquired through contact with the West in their cultural achievements. Kwema is understanding that a new day is dawning after a heavy night, and that we can still hold the Pudali, a traditional festival where knowledge, food and possibilities of existence are exchanged in a world in constant transformation. Feeding memory and body.”

Art Piece: Blackbasebeingbeyond

Artist: Torwase Dyson, Afro American artist

FROM: https://35.bienal.org.br/en/participante/torkwase-dyson/

In the work Blackbasebeingbeyond (2023), with specific reference to Castelo de Garcia d’Ávila / Forte de Garcia d’Ávila in Mata de São João, Bahia, Dyson asks: How did looking become extraordinary? In this 16th- century castle, that at its exterior overlooked the Atlantic Ocean and the sugar cane plantations of enslaved Indigenous peoples, and at its interior housed a double torture chamber whereby an imprisoned runaway slave would be subjected to the terror and death by a captured and starved animal, Dyson explores the ocular work of the hidden, obscured, concealed, or untraceable body. Dyson’s sculptures are instruments for new and yet unknown ways of seeing and tools to think about the “liveness” of those who died in captivity.

FROM https://www.wallpaper.com/art/sao-paulo-biennial-2023-review

Taking activism, repressed cultures and peoples, the art history of South America and how we look at them, the biennial questions and repositions how we view the world. The result is a present, clear and non-judgmental exhibition that speaks both to the local context in Brazil and the international landscape. Reference points include the work of Caribbean philosopher Edouard Glissant and a post-national, diasporic standpoint – one that unites rather than divides. There is an example of every artistic medium.

There was huge excitement and anticipation at the opening of the show (on 6 September), the first majority Black-curated show since the biennial’s inception some 72 years ago. All four curators have an activism to their practice and a sense of purpose in terms of art that challenges and looks for answers.

We found a Canadian representation!

The artist Kapwani Kiwanga is from Hamilton, Ontario.

FROM: https://35.bienal.org.br/en/participante/kapwani-kiwanga/

For the 35th Bienal, Kiwanga presents pink-blue (2017), born out of her research into total institutions – such as prisons and psychiatric institutions – and the impact of punitive design and architecture,
and constant vigilance, on our carcasses. The installation brings to light the mechanisms that silently shape, regulate and predict modes of sociability. The color pink, especially Baker-Miller Pink, is used to calm aggressive instincts (rehabilitation or policy of control?), while blue (neon) makes it difficult to find veins, inhibiting intravenous drug users (damage prevention or increasing risks?).

A pause for lunch at Cozinha Ocupação 9 de Junho (Ocupation Moviment June 9th)

MSTC is a homeless movement in downtown São Paulo. This cafe offers meals and snacks at the restaurant on the mezzanine of the main floor, and at the café on the second floor.

The beer sold here brings a special label about the movement of agricultural workers, advocating for land reform in Brazil.

FROM WIKIPEDIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landless_Workers%27_Movement

Landless Workers' Movement is a social movement in Brazil, inspired by Marxism, generally regarded as one of the largest in Latin America, with an estimated informal membership of 1.5 million across 23 of Brazil's 26 states. MST defines its goals as access to the land for poor workers through land reform in Brazil, and activism around social issues that make land ownership more difficult to achieve, such as unequal income distribution, racism, sexism, and media monopolies. MST strives to achieve a self-sustainable way of life for the rural poor.

The MST differs from previous land reform movements in its single-issue focus; land reform for them is a self-justifying cause. The organization maintains that it is legally justified in occupying unproductive land, pointing to the most recent Constitution of Brazil (1988), which contains a passage saying that land should fulfill a social function (Article 5, XXIII). The MST also notes, based on 1996 census statistics, that 3% of the population owns two-thirds of all arable land in Brazil.

In 1991, MST received the Right Livelihood Award "for winning land for landless families, and helping them to farm it sustainably."

This is a must see installation by Brazilian artists Ayrson Heraclito and Tigana Santana.

Floresta de Infinitos (Forest of Infinities) is a labyrinth of 450 bamboo trees, honours environmental activists, specially in the Amazon Region, and Afro-Indigenous personalities.

Here is a photo projection of Bruno Pereira, a Brazilian indigenist killed last year along with British journalist Dom Phillip, while reporting about illegal mining in the Amazon Region.

The Bienal building itself is a art piece!

Exhibition view of the work of Tadáskía, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

FROM: https://35.bienal.org.br/en/participante/tadaskia/

The work is divided into bilingual texts, with references to the black feminist thinker Audre Lorde, and drawings of different colors and thicknesses, which look like “ruffled feathers.” The crooked and curved lines traced on those pages, whether in her verses or in her drawings, are the matrix gesture of Ave preta mística. The alternation between the writing and the pages with colored images provides the shape and rhythm of the narrative. Like the formation of a flock, each part of the book is a singular expression: they are elements that relate to each other and reconfigure themselves with each new passage.

We spent five hours to see te whole exhibition, but I would recommend at least two days to fully enjoy and process each artwork.

Outside, at the Ibirapuera Park, we rented a family bike to visit the most visited South American park.

FROM WIKIPEDIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibirapuera_Park

Ibirapuera Park was the first metropolitan park in São Paulo, designed along the lines of other great English landscape gardens built in the 20th century in major cities around the globe, but inspired on modern drafts from the landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx. It was inaugurated on 21 August 1954 for the 400th anniversary of the city of São Paulo with buildings designed by architect João Felipe Pereira and landscape by agronomist Otávio Augusto Teixeira Mendes.

Ibirapuera is one of Latin America's largest urban parks, together with Chapultepec Parkin Mexico City and Simón Bolívar Park in Bogota, and its iconic importance to São Paulo is often internationally comparable to that of Central Park to New York City. The park is often cited as one of the most vibrant and photographed parks in the world, as together with its large area for leisure, jogging and walking, it hosts a vivid cultural scene with museums, a music hall, and popular events such as São Paulo Fashion Week, congresses and trade shows. It is claimed to be the most visited urban park in South America, is listed as one of the best parks in the world, and has been described as "a green oasis at the heart of a concrete jungle"