32nd Bienal de São Paulo: Incerteza viva

Titled Incerteza viva (Live uncertainty), the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo means to reflect on the current conditions of life and the strategies offered by contemporary art to harbor or inhabit uncertainty. The exhibition, curated by Jochen Volz and the co-curators Gabi Ngcobo (South Africa), Júlia Rebouças (Brazil), Lars Bang Larsen (Denmark) and Sofía Olascoaga (Mexico), will be held from September 10 to December 11, 2016 at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, featuring approximately 90 artists and collectives, 54 of which are announced below:

Alia Farid; Anawana Haloba; Bárbara Wagner; Bené Fonteles; Carla Filipe; Carolina Caycedo; Cecilia Bengolea; Charlotte Johannesson; Cristiano Lenhardt; Dineo Seshee Bopape; Ebony G. Patterson; Eduardo Navarro; Em’kal Eyongakpa; Erika Verzutti; Felipe Mujica; Francis Alÿs; Gabriel Abrantes; Gilvan Samico; Güneş Terkol; Heather Phillipson; Helen Sebidi; Henrik Olesen; Hito Steyerl; Iza Tarasewicz; Jorge Menna Barreto; José Antonio Suárez Londoño; José Bento; Kathy Barry; Koo Jeong A; Lais Myrrha; Lourdes Castro; Luke Willis Thompson; Mariana Castillo Deball; Michal Helfman; Misheck Masamvu; Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas; OPAVIVARÁ!; Öyvind Fahlström; Park McArthur; Pia Lindman; Pierre Huyghe; Pilar Quinteros; Priscila Fernandes; Rachel Rose; Rikke Luther; Rita Ponce de León; Ruth Ewan; Sandra Kranich; Ursula Biemann; Víctor Grippo; Vídeo nas Aldeias; Vivian Caccuri; Wilma Martins; William Pope.L

The exhibition 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, without evading or manipulating them,” says curator Jochen Volz. “In order for us to objectively confront the big questions of our time, such as global warming and its impact on our habitat, the extinction of species and the loss of biological and cultural diversity, economic and political instability, injustice in the distribution of the earth's natural resources and global migration, perhaps it's necessary to detach uncertainty from fear.”

As part of the research for the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo and inaugurating its public activities, four Study Days will be held between March and May of 2016, combining visits to cultural institutions and initiatives, local communities, ecological reserves, artists' studios, and research centers with four conferences, open to the public and conducted by invited lecturers and professionals at the different locales where they are to take place:

Cuiabá, Mato Grosso, Brazi, one of the richest and most fragile biomes in the world, a land of depleted soil, of monoculture, of species vanished and knowledge forgotten, selected for a conference discussing extinction and preservation, abundance and drought; Santiago, Chile, for a conference focusing on cosmologies and the enmeshed relationships between art and science, myth and history from a present-day perspective; Accra, Ghana, a point of return for many slaves from Brazil, a locale of bonds and renewals, projections and collective dreams; and the Peruvian Amazon, where the objective is to work with education, connections between the human race and nature, and to address questions about what is natural and original.

To mark the cycle, a seminar will be held at the Bienal building in São Paulo in June, interlacing the themes and proposals developed during these collaborative investigations. Registers of the Study Days and the seminar in São Paulo will be published on the Bienal website and in a specific publication.

Seeking to actively participate in the continuous and collective construction of the Ibirapuera Park as a public space, the exhibition sees itself as an extension of the garden inside the pavilion. Conversely, 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.

Curator: Jochen Volz
Co-curators: Gabi Ngcobo, Júlia Rebouças, Lars Bang Larsen and Sofía Olascoaga
 

Press information:
Gabriela Longman, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo—international communications
T +55 11 5576 7628 / gabriela.longman@bienal.org.br

Juan Sánchez, Rhiannon Pickles PR
T +44 788 223 7732 / juan@picklespr.com