Context and Cosmogony

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Exhibition | Paulo Herkenhoff Occupation
From August 30th to November 23th, 2025
Tuesday to Saturday, from 11am to 20pm, Sundays and holidays, from 11am to 19pm

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Exhibition | Ailton Krenak Occupation
From September 04th to November 23th
Tuesday to Saturday, from 11am to 20pm, Sundays and holidays, from 11am to 19pm

A Forts D'Aloia & Gabriel presents Slow Flying LuminescenceLuiz Zerbini's new exhibition in São Paulo. In this body of work, the image of termite mounds from the Brazilian Cerrado, with larvae in a state of bioluminescence, triggers a new investigation into color, light, and rhythm, based on phenomena from the natural world.

In the exhibition space, a large sculpture installation dialogues with large-scale paintings, creating an environment where traces of human presence coexist with the reproduction and transformation of nature's own image. In this interconnected and hypnotically atmospheric environment, surfaces and volumes become portals to an expanded perception. Pictorial and sculptural properties shift from one work to another, establishing a system of visual exchanges. The termite mound, in turn, appears sometimes in painting, sometimes as a sculptural body with a psychedelic texture.

“Like an affective and botanical inventory of the tropics, the artist once again turns to the landscape—not as an idyllic setting, but as a living, inhabited body, strained by visible and invisible histories. The forest, the fields, the riverbanks, the urban vestiges, and the remnants of what we call civilization are translated into large-scale sculptures and canvases, with geometric patterns and organic gestures,” writes Catarina Duncan in the critical essay accompanying the exhibition.

Together, the paintings and the installation form a web of relationships between narrative and geography, highlighting Zerbini's continuous experimentation across different media. The exhibition shows how environments, whether tropical forests, animal architectures, or coastal margins, are composed of vital layers, balances between opposites, ongoing transformations, a historical, ecological, and plastic entanglement.

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Exhibition Slow-Flying Luminescence
November 01th to January 24th, 2026
Tuesday to Friday, from 10 am to 19 pm, Saturday from 10 am to 18 pm

A Gallery Cabinet, at Governor's House Cultural ParkOn Vila Velha opens the exhibition Modern Forever – Brazilian Modernist Photography in the Itaú Cultural CollectionAfter being presented in Vitória, the exhibition returns to Espírito Santo, now arriving in Vila Velha with a new selection from this collection curated by Iatã Cannabrava, photography curator and researcher. It brings together 43 works by 14 renowned artists, focusing on their participation in the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, in particular, and their importance to the modernist movement for Brazilian culture and identity.

Always curated by Cannabrava, Moderna para Sempre has been shown in different cities in Brazil and abroad, with different selections. It began in 2010 at the Rio Grande do Sul Art Museum in Porto Alegre. It then traveled to Belém, Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Recife, Ribeirão Preto, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, and again Porto Alegre, as well as Vitória, and now Vila Velha. In São Paulo, it was presented at the IC itself in 2014 with the complete set of 115 images by 26 artists. Abroad, it has been shown in Asunción, Paraguay; Mexico City, Mexico; Lima, Peru; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Montevideo, Uruguay; and Santiago, Chile.

The exposure

In this new tour, Moderna para Sempre presents works by modernist photographers Ademar Manarini, Eduardo Enfeldt, Eduardo Salvatore, Gaspar Gasparian, Georges Radó, Geraldo de Barros, German Lorca, Gunter EG Schroeder, João Bizarro da Nave Filho, José Yalenti, Lucilio Correa Leite Júnior, Osmar Peçanha, Paulo Pires, and Rubens Teixeira Scavone. A team of educators from Itaú Cultural will travel to Vila Velha to train local educators on the exhibited works and the artists, enabling them to conduct guided tours with the public.

"Attentive to the transformations occurring in the world, Brazilian modernist photographers devoured influences to create a new photography, which was based on an essentially creative and disruptive interpretation," explains the curator.

“It is an honor for the Governor's House Cultural Park to host the Modern Forever exhibition as the second exhibition of the Gabinete Gallery. By celebrating names such as Geraldo de Barros, German Lorca, and Eduardo Salvatore, the exhibition allows the public to learn about a part of Brazilian history through the eyes of great photographers,” says Mirella Schena, manager and artistic-cultural coordinator of the Governor's House Cultural Park.

Thus, one of the highlights of the exhibition is the work Formas (1950), by Eduardo Salvatore, an important name in the photo club scene, being one of the founders of the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, in 1939, in São Paulo. Other important names from the period present in the exhibition are Eduardo Enfeldt, with the photograph Escada Branca (1957), as well as Lucilio Correa Leite Júnior, with Sinfonia Fluorescente (1960), and Sem Título (1966), by the Portuguese João Bizarro da Nave Filho.

Another highlight is the set of 13 photographs by José Yalenti: nine are works from 1950, in addition to Energia (1945), Fonte 9 de Julho (1952), and Exaustor and Arquitetura nº7, both from 1957. Geraldo de Barros, in turn, has his work present in the exhibition with Autorretrato, from the Edition Musée de l'Élysée Lausanne series (Switzerland, 1949), and five other photographs from the Fotoformas series. Also included in the exhibition are six works by German Lorca. Still from the 1950s, are Chuva na Vidraça, from 1952, and Curvas Concêntricas and Curvas Cruzadas, both from 1955, which join Folhagens, from 1960, and Catedral Aparecida and Pernas, from 10 years later.

The exhibition also includes works by photographers Osmar Peçanha and Ademar Manarini. From the former, there are Palmas (1951), Equilíbrio (1960) and Linhas (1993), and from the latter, only one, Sem título (1954), which portrays the author's abstract-geometric style.

Joining them are two photographs by Rubens Teixeira Scavone, both from 1950, one by Gaspar Gasparian from 1954, a work from 1960 by Georges Radó, and two others from 1970 by Gunter EG Schroeder. Completing the selection in Vila Velha are the works Páteo de Manobras (1961), Estrutura-Catedral (1954), Luz da Cerâmica (1963) and Sinfonia Industrial (1975), by Paulo Pires.

Photoclub

Brazilian photo club activity began in São Paulo, at the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, in 1939, and spread to other photo clubs in the city. Generally, it was composed of amateur photographers who, free from the obligations of commercial work, were able to experiment and break rules. Among them were artists such as Geraldo de Barros, José Yalenti, and German Lorca.

"In the images, we find searches for forms and volumes, abstractionism and surrealism, in a clear influence from the old European avant-garde movements," says Cannabrava.

The works of these artists began as pictorialists, imitating the patterns of 19th-century painting. With the development and economic growth of the country, they led to the breeding ground of modern Brazilian photography, the so-called Paulista School. "The works seem unified because they have a strong thematic unity, divided into two groups: cities or forms, whether geometric, elaborate, or symmetrical," explains the curator. "From this point on, textures, backlighting, sober framing, lines, solarizations, photomontages, photograms, among other topics, become part of the creative vocabulary," he reinforces.

It is also worth noting that most members of the photo clubs were immigrants of European origin or descendants of refugees from wars in the northern hemisphere, establishing in Brazil a production with a more optimistic and hopeful outlook on the future, distant from the socio-political issues that predominated in the works of the time, and differentiating themselves from the European movement focused on social difficulties.

According to the curator, this group anticipated the current landscape, creating what could be called the first known social networks in the field of photography. Through exhibitions, catalogs, and competitions, they formed an international network that promoted their work in major photography centers worldwide, as well as in Brazil.

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Exhibition Modern Forever – Brazilian Modernist Photography in the Itaú Cultural Collection
November 05th to 30th
Tuesday to Saturday, from 08 am to 17 pm (last entry at 16 pm), Sundays and holidays, from 08 am to 15 pm (last entry at 14 pm)

A Nara Roesler Sao Paulo is pleased to present From the Wind, solo exhibition by the French artist Xavier Veilhan, with works conceived through his Transatlantic Studio – a project in which the artist transfers his studio to a sailboat, offering an alternative to air transport for the transportation of works of art.

Aboard the Outremer 5X catamaran – a wind-powered vessel made with 50% flax fiber – Veilhan, his team, and his artworks will cross the Atlantic Ocean, departing from Concarneau, Brittany, France, and arriving at the port of Santos, Brazil. The artist will develop some of the works during the voyage and complete them in São Paulo, where they will be presented to the public at the Nara Roesler São Paulo exhibition from November 8, 2025, to January 31, 2026. “I want to further develop this initiative of a floating studio and wind-powered transport for some of my upcoming exhibitions. The goal is to create new imaginaries and offer an alternative to the pressures and frenetic pace of the art world: international fairs and exhibitions consume enormous amounts of energy and prioritize speed,” explains the artist. “The sector needs to adapt to ecological challenges, but it has difficulty doing so while maintaining competitiveness. This project is an experiment, an attempt – which has value as a work of art in itself,” he adds. For this expedition, the artist will be accompanied by Roland Jourdain, award-winning sailor and co-founder of Fondation Explore; Denis Juhel, assistant captain; Matthias Colin, oceanographer, who will be on board for research purposes; Antoine Veilhan, the artist's son, specializing in carpentry and nautical joinery; and Carmen Panfiloff, assistant sculptor and joiner.

The Fondation Explore and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris are partners in this voyage and will use the crossing for scientific research. Plankton samples will be collected along the route and transmitted via satellite to feed scientific databases. On board, a hydrofoil equipped with a hydrophone will record underwater life, in order to understand and preserve it.

The intention is for Veilhan to work as he does in his studio in France. The boat is not just a means of transport, but a moving studio. To produce sculptures on board, the team will bring woodworking equipment from France, designed by Antoine and built to operate without electricity, such as a pedal-operated band saw.

Em From the windXavier Veilhan revisits a central concern in his practice: the relationship between the second and third dimensions. For the artist, every sculpture begins as a line, and it is through its accumulation and succession that volume emerges. This articulation between the graphic and the spatial reflects the passage from image to reality. A linear rhythm unfolds throughout the exhibition: in wall drawings, mobiles, and sculptures, in which layers of assembled plywood suggest both structure and fluidity.

Evoking the constant line of the horizon and the moving coordinates of the nautical charts that gave rise to the exhibition, these forms translate Veilhan's transatlantic crossing into a spatial design where orientation and movement coexist.

The exhibition will also include a video, made during the trip, that intertwines elements of fiction and documentary. As Veilhan notes, the project is “a celebration of all that is alive, a celebration of nature.”

The idea is that the exhibition at Nara Roesler São Paulo will be the first of a new model for the creation and transportation of artworks conceived by the artist, incorporating sustainability and also the creative process in a way that more emphatically reflects his poetics. In this way, the intention is, through future partnerships within and outside of France, to expand this format, bringing new arrangements, materials, and discussions to it.

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Exhibition | Of the Wind
From November 8th to December 20th
Monday to Friday, from 10 am to 18 pm, Saturday from 11 am to 15 pm

The National Museum of Afro-Brazilian Culture (MUNCAB) inaugurates the exhibition “Memory: accounts of another history”, one of the central events of France-Brazil 2025 Season.

Curated by Nadine Hounkpatin e Jamile Coelhothe exhibition brings together 20 black female artists From the African diaspora and the African continent, who appropriate the visual arts as a field for elaborating memory and symbolically reconstructing the world. Their productions establish a decolonial thought, in which art acts as a form of listening, rewriting, and re-existence.

Participants: Amélia Sampaio, Barbara Asei Dantoni, Barbara Portailler, Beya Gille Gacha, Charlotte Yonga, Dalila Dalléas Bouzar, Enam Gbewonyo, Fabiana Ex-Souza, Gosette Lubondo, Josèfa Ntjam, Luana Vitra, Luisa Magaly, Luma Nascimento, Madalena dos Santos Reinbolt, Maria Lídia dos Santos Magliani, Myriam Mihindou, Na Chainkua Reindorf, Selly Raby Kane, Tuli Mekondjo and YêdaMaria.

After touring Bordeaux, Abidjan, Yaoundé, and Antananarivo, the exhibition arrives in Salvador—a city where African heritage manifests itself as an aesthetic and artistic foundation—to establish a new chapter in the project. At MUNCAB, these artists construct a territory of enunciation and reparation, in which image, body, and gesture become instruments for reconfiguring historical narratives and affirming Black subjectivities.

The exhibition is a project of the Ministry of Culture, Petrobras, and the French Embassy in Brazil, in partnership with MUNCAB, and managed by Amafro.

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Exhibition Memory: accounts of another history
November 04th to March 1st, 2026
Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM, Saturday from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM

The Pinacoteca's last exhibition of 2025, “Carnival Work”, is a collective exhibition with works by 70 artists from different generations and backgrounds, such as Alberto Pitta, Bajado, Barbara Wagner, Ilu Obá de Min, Heitor dos Prazeres, Juarez Paraíso, Lita Cerqueira, Maria Apparecida Urbano, Rafa Bqueer and Rosa Magalhães.

The exhibition at the Pina Contemporânea building displays 200 works including props, decoration projects and historical documentation in photography and video, as well as commissions for new projects by the artists. adonai, Ana Lira e Ray Vianna.

Divided into four themes – Fantasy fabric, Jobs, The ability to  e City, “Carnival Work” presents the country's largest popular festival as a production chain that involves the work of many hands even before the festival takes place, while alluding to the precariousness and invisibility of these professionals.

THEMATIC CENTERS

The core Fantasy fabric refers to two characteristic elements of Carnival: the act of dressing up and the power of imagination. Projects and sketches are part of the central part of the Grand Gallery, such as studies of J. Cunha for the Salvador carnival and Joana Lira for the street decorations in Recife.

Discussions about the party's working conditions are presented in the core Jobs, in which works are presented that bring to light the representation of workers.

The relationship between carnival and urban or rural space appears in the core City through representations of blocks, cordons, afoxés and other forms of processions. The center brings together works such as photographs taken by Diego Nigro in the Galo da Madrugada carnival block (2025).

Finally, the core The ability to  celebrates the meetings of sugarcane workers in Pernambuco transforming themselves into kings and queens of maracatu, as well as black women and marginalized peripheral groups becoming, for a few days, the figures of command during the festival in Bahia: Ebony Goddesses, Reis Momos, Carnival Queens.

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Exhibition Carnival Work
From November 8, 2025 to April 12, 2026
Wednesday to Monday, from 10:18 to XNUMX:XNUMX

A DM Mendes Wood We are pleased to present the exhibition. Birth & Standardization de Antonio Oba, which occupies the entire gallery space in Barra Funda with new and emblematic works. The works, developed using distinct techniques such as painting, drawing, installation, and film, continue the artist's investigation into the construction of national identity, and its contradictions and influences, through icons and symbols present in Brazilian culture.

The exhibition's title stems from the idea of ​​birth as a marker of a moment, of a new existence on Earth. This miraculous event also carries the counterpart of fortune and luck, which accompanies us from conception. For Obá, “Being subject to this is not about a choice. Being subject to this is about an irreverence towards the inevitable. So, what we can do is demarcate these various fortunes through rite, celebration, symbol, and language.”

Each work that makes up the exhibition contributes to this attempt to situate the idea of ​​luck, fortune, sometimes as a prayer, sometimes as a ritual that celebrates it.

An unprecedented installation, located in an enclosed space at the back of the gallery, directly refers to the idea of ​​play and luck. In it, columns of cowrie shells spill over gilded bronze sieves, carrying ceramic eggs painted red. The cowrie shells represent elements of an attempt to read luck, destiny, and fate, and symbolize the currency of exchange, which also transforms into an offering. In their arrangement within the space, the cowrie shells form ascending columns, like a territory of spiritual elevation and re-signification of life in the face of its potentially fatalistic aspects.

At the entrance to the exhibition space, a path of swords representing Saint George and Iansã leads to a new installation: an altar with two tree trunks symbolizing the pillory. The trunks are entirely studded with nails—in one, the nails point outwards; in the other, inwards—symbolizing protection and punishment and the difficulty of harmonizing tensions. Between the pillories, cables suspend a bronze head with a plumb bob at the tip. This installation is an offering to the lord of the path, therefore, it has a connection with Exu.

the installation Ka'a porá (2024), presented for the first time in the traveling exhibition Finca-Pé: Stories of the Land At the CCBB in Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and Brasília, it occupies a prominent place in the exhibition. Sculptures of feet, representing both the human foot and that of a tree, emphasize the connection with the ground. The configuration of the work resembles a small garden, with trunks arranged in a seemingly random way, each suggesting a different direction within a labyrinth. The title of the installation derives from the Tupi term. ka'a porá, which refers to an individual who settles and anchors themselves to the land. The expression also alludes to the mythical figure of Caipora, protector of the forests in Brazilian indigenous mythology. Another symbolic element of the installation revisits the concept of pruning, understood here as an act of violence that breaks with life and nature.

Paintings of varying sizes and techniques compose the visual narrative of the exhibition. A set of 22 small-format paintings presents Obá's interpretation of the Tarot. In these works, the artist uses a mixture of techniques along with gold leaf, giving a unique magical and fantastical tone to the oracle cards. In addition to these, the exhibition includes new large-scale paintings, as well as a work painted directly onto one of the walls of the exhibition space. In these pieces, figures and symbols that make up Brazilian identity suggest new interpretations. The exhibition also includes previously unseen drawings made with charcoal, India ink, pencil, and tempera on canvas.

The film Charmed (2024) presents a performance by the artist that proposes reflections on symbolic systems — especially religious ones. The performative action evokes a ritualistic perspective, centered on the figure of the pilgrim, who, in his gesture, synthesizes elements of belief, culture and tradition associated with the imagery of the pilgrim.

With this collection of works, which spans different media and symbolisms, the exhibition reaffirms the power of Antonio Obá's production in constructing a poetics that investigates identity, territory, and spirituality.

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Exhibition Birth
From November 8th March 14, 2026
Tuesday to Friday, from 11 am to 19 pm, Saturday from 10 am to 17 pm

Exhibition I am Silva.
From November 13st to December 23th
Monday to Friday from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM, Saturday from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM