More Than Perfect Symposium: “After It’s All Said”

Entitled After It’s All Said, the symposium, held at New York University (NYU), takes as its starting point a philosophical question posed by Denise Ferreira da Silva: is it possible to cultivate a sensibility that presumes and anticipates what lies beyond all that has been said and done about colonial and racial violence, and the work these forms of violence perform for global capital?

Organized on the occasion of the 39th Panorama of Brazilian Art: After It’s All Said,  the symposium is presented by More-Than-Perfect: Explorations of Black T/Senses of Future, the Critical Racial and Anti-Colonial Study Co-Laboratory (CRACS), and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Languages and Literatures at New York University, with the support of the Ford Foundation. It brings together scholars, artists, writers, and cultural practitioners to consider the possibilities of “reading art as a confrontation” and to explore the relations between two major racial laboratories in the Americas: Brazil and the United States.

Throughout the day, conversations and presentations move between critical theory, artistic practice, and questions of race, aesthetics, territory, and the body. The program opens with curator Diane Lima, introduced by Cauê Alves, chief-curator at MAM, and moderated by Giovanna Querido, in a conversation about the conceptual and curatorial propositions of the 39th Panorama. It continues with Denise Ferreira da Silva, Fred Moten and David Lloyd, moderated by Diane Lima, bringing together perspectives on Black studies, poetics, aesthetics, coloniality, and the conditions of contemporary thought. 

The afternoon begins with a keynote by Rosana Paulino, presented by Nathalia Carneiro, whose practice engages memory, racialization, gender, and the enduring effects of slavery in Brazil. The symposium concludes with artists Rose Afefé and Iagor Peres—participants in the 39th Panorama—in conversation with writer and critic Zoë Hopkins and translated by Mel Adún, turning toward artistic practices that engage territory, materiality, and the body.

39th Panorama of Brazilian Art: After It’s All Said
The symposium takes place in conjunction with the 39th Panorama of Brazilian Art: After It’s All Said, curated by Diane Lima and on view at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo through January 24. The 39th edition brings together 33 artists from 11 Brazilian states and considers how the epistemological shifts of recent decades, shaped in part by demands for racial reparation and the achievements of affirmative action policies, have transformed Brazilian artistic production. 

Inspired by the title and philosophical question formulated by Denise Ferreira da Silva, After It’s All Said asks where artistic production has overflowed in its pursuit of expanding the limits of aesthetic representation through a radical exercise in imagination. In dialogue with Ferreira da Silva’s thought, Diane Lima develops a project that, through “reading art as confrontation,” considers how artists have enacted radical exercises in imagination through their poetic and compositional practices, revealing an ongoing and collective movement toward liberation.

The Panorama of Brazilian Art is a biennial exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo since 1969. One of the most established exhibitions on Brazil’s contemporary art calendar, each edition presents a distinct curatorial perspective engaging with urgent contemporary debates and the diversity of artistic production in Brazil, strengthening dialogue among artists, institutions, and audiences.

Program
10–10:15 AM
Welcome & Institutional Remarks

10:15–11:45 AM
Diane Lima
Presented by Cauê Alves
Moderated by Giovanna Querido

11:45am–12pm
Coffee break 

12–1:30pm
Denise Ferreira da Silva, Fred Moten & David Lloyd
Moderated by Diane Lima

1:30–2:45pm
Lunch

2:45–4:15pm
Keynote: Rosana Paulino
Presented by Nathalia Carneiro

4:15–4:30pm
Break

4:30–6pm
Artists Rose Afefé & Iagor Peres
Moderated by Zoe Hopkins
Translated by Mel Adún