“Nobody can come with me” – a title that borrows the name of a plant that simultaneously protects and poisons – is Diane Lima’s curatorial project selected for the Brazilian representation at the next Venice Biennale, which opens on May 9, 2026.

In an exclusively female representation, the proposal brings together two fundamental names in Brazilian and international contemporary art: Rosana Paulino and Adriana Varejão. "We start from narrative, artistic, and visual dialogues," Diane summarizes, emphasizing the importance of a common ground in the work of these two artists, who for decades have anchored their poetics in our colonial, racist, and patriarchal past and who—more recently—have been examining not only wounds but also processes of regeneration and resistance.

Interweaving these productions, creating a collective foundation for the encounter of fundamental works in the careers of both artists, is one of the great ambitions of this project, still in progress and without defined contours, but in full creative turmoil. "One is already influencing the other," says Rosana. "No doubt new things will emerge, or reissues of little-known works," adds Adriana. 

The idea is to move away from a certain predictability, from the exhibition of already established works, to prioritize the discovery of new paths and also seek to challenge the relationship with the building (a 1964 work, an icon of an ambiguous and contradictory modernity, currently undergoing a major restoration process) and with the Biennale's host space. "The Giardini's configuration is extremely reactionary, the logic of various countries building monuments to themselves, according to a financial and political order of power. We will approach this monument critically, but also present other solutions and possibilities," anticipates Adriana.

The plant itself, which gives the exhibition its name, reveals this paradoxical ambiguity of something that is simultaneously healing and poisonous, whose toxicity is both threatening and protective. As Rosana, who first investigated the metaphorical potential of this species in the series of the same name, says, "we must also look for solutions, otherwise we become paralyzed, always revisiting what hasn't yet been cured." After all, "Brazil is curiously a country that has never looked at itself," she adds. There are many overlapping layers of political, social, racial, and gender struggle. Diane also adds the metaphysical importance of this element in a profoundly unjust and syncretic society. 


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