Due to the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus, Sesc São Paulo has joined with the efforts of other institutions, the government and the population with the aim of stopping the spread of COVID-19 in Brazil. Therefore, the schedule of projects carried out in its units in the state of São Paulo, including the exhibitions and other activities focused on the field of the visual arts, will need to be adjusted. To collaborate with the effort for collective social distancing at this moment, the aim here is to revisit a selection of publications online concerning visual arts projects carried out by Sesc in recent years.
Lasar Segall – Ensaio sobre a Cor [Lasar Segall – Essay on Color]
Curated by Maria Alice Milliet, the anthological exhibition held in partnership with Museu Lasar Segall, from October 2018 to March 2019, at Sesc 24 de Maio, presented the distinct chromatic treatments used by the Lithuanian-Brazilian artist in the different phases of his career. The exhibition brochure contains texts by the curator and images of around 100 works by Lasar Segall (1889–1957), a key figure of modernism, both inside and outside Brazil.
À Nordeste [To the Northeast]
Featuring more than 300 works by 160 artists and artist collectives, this show held at Sesc 24 de Maio in 2019, curated by Bitu Cassundé, Clarissa Diniz and Marcelo Campos, sought to tension the debate concerning the sociocultural invention of the Brazilian Northeast as a geographic space, as well as its symbolic unfoldings in the Brazilian imaginary. The exhibition’s publication contains the curatorial text, the list of artworks, and ten essays by authors including Yuri Firmeza, Diane Lima and Kaciano Gadelha.
Entrevendo – Cildo Meireles [Glimpsing – Cildo Meireles]
Having ended in early 2020, at Sesc Pompeia, Entrevendo was the largest exhibition ever held in Latin America about this artist, a key figure in Brazilian contemporary art. It featured some of his most well-known works, along with installations never before presented in Brazil, and even some works shown for the first time ever, under the curatorship of Júlia Rebouças and Diego Matos. Besides curatorial texts, the exhibition brochure contains an overview of Cildo Meireles’s production, which made use of various artistic languages.
21st Bienal de Arte Contemporânea Sesc_Videobrasil | Comunidades Imaginadas [21st Sesc_Videobrasil Biennial of Contemporary Art | Imagined Communities]
“The presence of the nationalisms for the understanding of the disputes that mark our time”—this was the main topic for this edition of the Bienal held from October 2019 to February 2020, at Sesc 24 de Maio, under the artistic direction of Solange Farkas and the curatorship of Gabriel Bogossian, Luisa Duarte and Miguel López. The book of readings with essays by various authors and the exhibition catalogue bring some perspectives to the debate.
Some of these publications are also available in the collection of publications of the Sesc São Paulo app, available for download at the App Store and at Google Play.
Sesc
Maintained by businesspeople in the commercial sector of goods, services and tourism, Sesc (Social Service of Commerce) is a private entity aimed at ensuring well-being and quality of life for the workers of this sector and their families. Throughout its more than 70 years of existence, Sesc has innovated by introducing new models of cultural action, and beginning in the 1980s has underscored the importance of education as a prerequisite for social transformation. In the state of São Paulo, Sesc has a network of 44 operational units—centers devoted to culture, sports, health, nutrition, and the personal development of children, teens, adults and older people, as well as social tourism and other areas of activity—visited by an average of 650,000 users per week.
