Gaudêncio Fidelis appointed chief-curator of 10th Mercosul Biennial
10th Mercosul Biennial
Messages from a New America
September–November 2015
Porto Alegre
Brazil
The Board of Directors of the Mercosul Biennial Foundation of Visual Arts (FBAVM) announced the appointment of Dr. Gaudêncio Fidelis as the chief curator for the 10th Mercosul Biennial exhibition to be held in 2015 in the city of Porto Alegre, South of Brazil. This is the second largest Biennial in Brazil after São Paulo. An art historian and curator, Mr. Fidelis will be responsible for overseeing the exhibition, working with and supervising a team of curators and professionals in charge of the curatorial artistic and educational platform of the project. The 10th edition of the Biennial will be titled Messages from a New America.
Mr. Fidelis announced the team of curators that will work with him. They are the adjunct curator Marcio Tavares (b. 1985, Porto Alegre, Brazil) and the assistant curators Ramón Castillo Inostroza (b. 1966, Santiago, Chile), Raphael Fonseca (b. 1988, Rio de Janeiro), Fernando Davis (b. 1974, La Plata, Argentina) and Carmen Cebreros Urzaiz (b. 1977, Mexico City).
Regarding the appointment, the art collector and entrepreneur José Antonio Fernandes Martins, President of the Biennial stated: “The appointment of Mr. Fidelis as chief curator reflects the Foundation’s commitment to a new vision for the Mercosul Biennial exhibition, now fully engaged with the artistic production from Latin America and the intention to provide an outstanding showcase for the art of the region, seeking to build visibility and legibility for works that in many cases have been ignored by the major narratives of art history.”
Mr. Fidelis stated that his appointment is a great honor and an extraordinary opportunity to carry out what may be considered the most important exhibition for art from Latin America, and his goal is to work with the Foundation to create an artistic platform for Latin America that is relevant to tell an alternative version of the history that has been written about the art of the region. While doing that, the exhibition intends to reconsider the blind spots and to challenge the canon built around the art of these countries while abandoning old clichés and preconceptions that have held the art of these countries hostage to the consolidated narratives formed by a Euro-American mainstream perspective of Latin American art.
Gaudêncio Fidelis (b. 1965, Brazil) is art historian and curator specialized in Brazilian modern and contemporary art and art from Latin America. He holds an M.A. from New York University (NYU) and a Ph.D. in Art History from the State University of New York SUNY, Binghamton, with a dissertation titled The Reception and Legibility of Brazilian Contemporary Art in the United States (1995–2005). He was the founder and former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rio Grande do Sul in 1992. Mr. Fidelis has published several artist’s monographs and hundreds of articles in Brazilian and foreign newspapers and magazines as well as numerous essays in catalogs and other art publications. He has published among others Material Dilemmas: Procedure, Permanence and Conservation in Contemporary Art (MAC-RS, 2002) and A Concise History of Mercosul Biennial (FBAVM, 2005). He has organized and curated more than 50 exhibitions for institutions such as Iberê Camargo Foundation, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rio Grande do Sul, Santander Cultural, Oi Futuro, Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art and Mercosul Biennial Foundation of Visual Arts when he was adjunct-curator of the 5th Mercosul Biennial in 2005. He has served as director of the Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art since 2011. He is a member of the Brazilian Association of Art Critics (ABCA). His forthcoming book Smell as a Criteria: Towards an Olfactory Politics in Curating will be published in Portuguese and English by Argos – University of Unochapecó publisher, to be released in 2015.
Sponsored by Gerdau, the 10th Mercosul Biennial will take place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, between September and December of 2015.
