34th Bienal de São Paulo: Though it’s dark, still I sing

At times it is necessary to place something into the void to reveal that it is full. Full of things that we cannot touch or hold in our hands; things whose origin or functioning we do not manage to understand, but which define and regulate our life, feeding and nourishing it. Or, like a gust of wind, shuffling and confusing it.

While significant changes had to be made to the initial choreography of the 34th Bienal de São Paulo, proposing a show that is continuously under construction and which emphasizes how the curatorial process is influenced by everything around it seems to have become even more meaningful. Conceived in the midst of the tragic events of the last months, Vento [Wind]—the upcoming installment of the Bienal—adapts and updates the original strategy of expanding the exhibition in both space and in time. A limited number of artworks occupy the vast Bienal Pavilion in an experimental gesture aimed at making visible and tangible both those artworks and the space between them. The artworks in the exhibition operate like the gestures of the performers in Joan Jonas’ film Wind (1968): they obey a carefully planned score, they have their logic and their specificity, but they also resist ungraspable opposing forces and while doing so help us to touch and to see, if this is possible, the space that separates us and the wind that blows between us.

An intense online program contributes to complexify and deepen a reflection on the main conceptual axes of the exhibition through streamed events, virtual studio visits, curatorial correspondences and a six-part series of encounters featuring the 34th Bienal’s curators and artists discussing the themes of the show. On November 18, 2020, the next installment of the Studio visits series will feature a conversation with Joan Jonas (1936, New York, USA), and on November 26, the second episode of the The voices of the artists series will present a discussion with Jaider Esbell (1979, Normandia, Brazil), Jaune Quick-to-see (1940, Flathead Reservation, USA), Sebastián Calfuqueo (1991, Santiago, Chile), and Sung Tieu (1987, Vietnam) departing from the Maxakali - Tikmũ’ũn chants tradition, already addressed by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti in the last curatorial correspondence, available here. The next correspondence, to be released in December, will be written by artist Lydia Ourahmane (1992, Saïda, Algeria). 

The updated list of already announced artists taking part in the 34th Bienal de São Paulo can be seen here. Vento features 21 of them: Ana Adamović (1974, Belgrade, Serbia), Luisa Cunha (1949, Lisbon, Portugal), Antonio Dias (1944, Campina Grande, Brazil–2018, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Jaider Esbell, León Ferrari (1920–2013, Buenos Aires, Argentina), Ximena Garrido-Lecca (1980, Lima, Peru), Clara Ianni (1987, São Paulo, Brazil), Joan Jonas, Eleonore Koch (1926–2018, Berlin, Germany), Deana Lawson (1979, New York, USA), Musa Michelle Mattiuzzi (1983, São Paulo, Brazil), Yuko Mohri (1980, Kanagawa, Japan), Melvin Moti (1977, Rotterdam, Netherlands), Neo Muyanga (1979, Johannesburg, South Africa), Paulo Nazareth (multiple dates, Watu Nak, Vale do Rio Doce, Brazil), Jacqueline Nova (1935–75, Ghent, Belgium), Gala Porras-Kim (1984, Bogotá, Colombia), Edurne Rubio (1974, Burgos, Spain), Alice Shintani (1971, São Paulo, Brazil), Regina Silveira (1939, Porto Alegre, Brazil), Koki Tanaka (1975, Kyoto, Japan).

Concurrently with Vento, works by Antonio Dias and Joan Jonas can also be seen at MAM SP and Estação Pinacoteca, respectively, in solo shows that integrate the institutional partnerships of the 34th Bienal. 

34th Bienal de São Paulo – Though it’s dark, still I sing
Curatorial team 
Chief curator: Jacopo Crivelli Visconti 
Adjunct curator: Paulo Miyada 
Guest curators: Carla Zaccagnini, Francesco Stocchi and Ruth Estévez 
Guest editor: Elvira Dyangani Ose, in collaboration with The Showroom, London

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