32nd Bienal de São Paulo: Incerteza Viva
Incerteza Viva [Live Uncertainty], is the theme for the 32nd Bienal of São Paulo. Held at the renowned Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, the event will include artists and collectives, exploring the latest in creativity from South America and beyond.
At its core though, the event will explore the theme of uncertainty. Incerteza Viva [Live Uncertainty], as explained by curator Jochen Volz, relates to the reaction on current conditions of life and the strategies offered by contemporary art to harbor or inhabit uncertainty. In other words, the Biennial sets out to ‘trace cosmological thinking’, ‘ambient and collective intelligence’, and ‘systemic and natural ecologies’.
“Art feeds off uncertainty, chance, improvisation, speculation and, at the same time, it attempts to count the uncountable and measure the immeasurable. It makes room for error, for doubt and risk – even for ghosts and the most profound misgivings within all of us, but without evading or manipulating them,” says Volz. Co-curators Gabi Ngcobo (South Africa), Júlia Rebouças (Brazil), Lars Bang Larsen (Denmark) and Sofía Olascoaga (Mexico) round out the curatorial team.
Seeking to actively participate in the continuous and collective construction of São Paulo’s iconic Ibirapuera Park as a public space, the event sees itself as an extension of the garden inside the pavilion, but also numerous artistic projects will be commissioned for the park. The firm Álvaro Razuk Arquitetura has been invited to develop the exhibit’s architectural project and exhibition displays.
Five months prior to its opening, the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo announced the complete list of the 81 participants. The final list presented a selection of participants from 33 countries characterised by a strong presence of artists born after 1970, women – who represent over half of the artists invited – and commissioned projects, produced for the context of the exhibition.
According Volz, the artists in the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo provide strategies and speculations on how to live with uncertainty. “We are seeking to understand diversity, to look at the unknown and question what we assume to be known. We view the different knowledge of our world as complementary rather than exclusionary,” he said.
Many of the works currently in development involve artistic residencies in the city of São Paulo and research travels in Brazil. Carla Filipe, for instance, in partnership with the Instituto de Botânica de São Paulo is developing a garden of edible plants, spontaneous plants and endangered plants. Iza Tarasewicz is studying the presence in Brazil of the Polish musical rhythm known as Mazurka. Dalton Paula visited three cities involved in the tobacco economy, and Pilar Quinteros traveled to Serra do Roncador, in Mato Grosso State, to follow the tracks of the explorer Percy Fawcett (18671925), who disappeared in the 1920s.
The proximity of the curators with the Fundação Bienal team, as well as the expansion of the institution’s partnerships, make the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo an especially rich edition, commented foundation president Luís Terepins.
Through this exploration of uncertainty from artists around the world, perhaps we will get closer to a few more discoveries. But in many ways, attainment of answers is a cool byproduct of an infinitely intriguing process.
The 32nd Bienal of São Paulo: Incerteza Viva [Live Uncertainty], will be held from Saturday 10 September to Monday 12 December 2016, at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, São Paulo, Brazil.
—
