Exhibition "35th São Paulo Biennial – choreographies of the impossible" at MAC-CE

In September, Fortaleza will host another itinerant São Paulo Biennial, which this year reaches its 35th edition, with the title choreographies of the impossible. Curated by Diane Lima, Grada Kilomba, Helio Menezes e Manuel Borja Villel, the itinerary will open on September 10th, at 18 pm, marked by a ceremony at the Museums Balcony and a vernissage at Museum of Contemporary Art of Ceará (MAC-CE), at the Dragão do Mar Center for Art and Culture (with entrance via Av. Presidente Castelo Branco S/N, corner with Rua Almirante Jaceguai). Access is free.

After the opening, the exhibition will remain on display until November 10, with free visits from Wednesday to Friday, from 9 am to 18 pm, and from 13 pm to 18 pm on Saturdays and Sundays, with last admission always at 17:30 pm. The exhibition has sensory accessibility resources, such as audio guide, Libras, audio readings, prints in enlarged font, Braille, tactile map, easy reading, handtalk and tactile interaction.

The 35th São Paulo Biennial – Choreographies of the Impossible takes a poetic look at the complexities and urgencies of the contemporary world, encouraging visitors to reflect on social, political and cultural issues. Diane Lima, Grada Kilomba, Hélio Menezes and Manuel Borja-Villel are the curators of the exhibition, which for its tour in Fortaleza brings together works by Cozinha Ocupação 9 de Julho – MSTC, Deborah Anzinger, Denilson Baniwa, Gabriel Gentil Tukano, Katherine Dunham, Leilah Weinraub, MAHKU (Huni-Kuin Artists Movement), Maya Deren, Melchor María Mercado, Nadir Bouhmouch and Soumeya Ait Ahmed, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Nikau Hindin, Rosa Gauditano, Simone Leigh and Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich.

Artists and Works

Among the artists who are part of the collective, Amazonian Denilson Baniwa, in Kwema [Dawn], combines resistance, belonging and beauty. With the set of works Kaá, Itá and Tatá, he makes reference to the ancestral practices of the Baniwa people in the face of the mythological and structural attacks faced by their community. Each of the works is produced in partnership with the educator and indigenous leader Jerá Guarani, Aparecida Baniwa and the researcher Francineia Baniwa.

Gabriel Gentil Tukano, also from Amazonas, who died in 2006, is honored with works that perpetuate the Tukano cosmogony and the sacredness of the ancestral territory.

Also on display are pieces by Jamaican artist Deborah Anzinger, whose work moves between language and materiality, exploring binaries that oppose and constitute each other.

The exhibition also includes the work of Katherine Dunham, a pioneer of modern dance, with video recordings of the choreographer's research into rhythms and gestures in the Caribbean region between 1940 and 1960.

In the film Shakedown (2018), Leilah Weinraub documents the life and culture of a lesbian strip club in Los Angeles, resulting in an intimate, daring and celebratory film-experience of African-American lesbianism.

The MAHKU collective, formed by artists Ibã Hunikuin, Kassia Borges Karaja, Acelino Hunikuin, Bane Hunikuin, Mana Hunikuin, Itamar Rios, Yaka Hunikuin and Cleudo Hunikuin, presents paintings that bring visual translations of the sacred Huni Meka songs, reverberating cultural activism and the preservation of the lands of the original peoples.

Visual artist and educator Nontsikelelo Mutiti, who designed the visual identity of the 35th São Paulo Biennial – choreographies of the impossible, promotes a dive into the meanings of braids and hair as one of the elements of the African diaspora that carry not only political and aesthetic meanings, but subjective ones, which say a lot about the daily lives, experiences and history of black people in the diaspora.

In the Album of Landscapes, Human Types and Customs of Bolivia, produced in the early days of the Republic of Bolivia, the watercolors painted by Melchor Maria Mercado during his travels through Bolivian territory are presented, now exhibited outside his native country.

The different formats of the works by the duo Nadir Bouhmouch and Soumeya Ait Ahmed constitute an expanded space for the arts and oral traditions of the Amazigh communities of North Africa, referring to a central square, a place of meeting and relationships.

In Nikau Hindin’s project Maramataka: The Stellar Lunar Calendar. De-colonising Time, next to a large aute (a fabric obtained from a long processing of mulberry bark) hangs a set of celestial charts that describe the current Maori year in thirteen lunar months. If these maps were once used to guide navigation and harvesting systems, today they reappear as a counterpoint to the Western, linear and progressive notion of time.

Maya Deren, one of the great names in experimental cinema, is also present with the film Meditation on Violence (1948), which explores dance and temporality.

The Fortaleza itinerary will be the only one to receive the collective Cozinha Ocupação 9 de Julho, from the Movimento dos Sem Teto do Centro (MSTC), which has been working in a broad multidisciplinary network since 2017, with redistribution policies, zero waste and a great concern for food security, giving visibility to the fight for housing in São Paulo.

Simone Leigh and Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich present the film Conspiracy, a work that, through overlapping tools, vocalizations and scenes that break through cinematic linearity and sequentiality, reinforces the networks of solidarity produced over centuries as spaces of insurgency by black and feminist women in the African diasporas, their multiple configurations, strategies and collective keys.

Finally, Vidas Prohibidas, with photographs by Rosa Gauditano, had its first exhibition at the 35th Bienal. The series brings together records of lesbian communities in São Paulo in the 1970s, still during the military dictatorship, which, with the fight for sexual freedom, resistance and pride, faced years of repression.

Ceará in the Visual Arts circuit

Fortaleza was one of the fourteen cities chosen, 11 of which are Brazilian and three are foreign, to host the exhibition, a critical and public success at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion in São Paulo. The president of the São Paulo Biennial Foundation, Andrea Pinheiro, says she is pleased to see the capital of Ceará, her hometown, host the exhibition for the third time: “Bringing the 35th São Paulo Biennial – Choreographies of the Impossible to this emblematic place reinforces the connection between the Biennial and the culture of Ceará, establishing new bridges with the public and the local art scene,” she says.

MAC-CE’s manager, Cecília Bedê, emphasizes: “Over its 25 years, MAC-CE has organized an exchange of exhibitions of different types and concepts, being a vital space for the thriving artistic production of Ceará and for the circulation of national and international exhibitions. In 2017, the Museum hosted the traveling exhibition of the 32nd São Paulo Biennial – Incerteza viva. Hosting for the second time a traveling exhibition of the São Paulo Biennial, one of the most important initiatives in the world arts circuit, legitimizes this trajectory and consolidates the relevance of this space in fostering critical thinking and artistic creation.”

The superintendent of the Dragão do Mar Center for Art and Culture, Helena Barbosa, adds: “The reception of this powerful itinerancy makes this moment even more special for us, as the theme of this 35th edition dialogues with the ancestry of Dragão and its role in fostering critical thinking, by using poetics to address urgent contemporary issues, and thereby expanding institutional and curatorial limits.”

Educational actions

During the exhibition period, art education activities will be carried out by the educational centers of MAC-CE and the São Paulo Biennial Foundation.

Opening the September agenda, on the opening day, September 10, at 19 pm, visitors to MAC-CE will be able to participate in a tour led by the Biennial's educational team through the traveling exhibition. The tour will highlight the work of artists such as Cozinha Ocupação 9 de Julho – MSTC, Denilson Baniwa and Rosa Gauditano, addressing issues such as the right to housing, the presence, struggle and recognition of indigenous peoples and spaces for lesbian communities to live together.

On the 12th, starting at 16 pm, educators Bruna de Jesus and Danilo Pêra, who make up the Biennial's educational core, will guide a new visit to the exhibition, proposing dialogues with the works of artists such as Denilson Baniwa, Katherine Dunham, MAHKU and Rosa Gauditano, with poetic/pedagogical gestures-actions through reflections, expressions and experiences in the possibilities of writing, rewriting, erasures, orality and radical imaginations worked on by the education team of the São Paulo Biennial.

On the same day, at 19 pm, educators Bruna de Jesus and Danilo Pêra will hold a discussion group on the panorama of art education in São Paulo and Ceará. Access is free upon registration via the form (bit.ly/encontroitinerantebienal35ª), with registration open until September 6.

Service
Exhibition | 35th São Paulo Biennial – choreographies of the impossible
From September 11nd to November 10th
Wednesday to Friday, from 9am to 18pm (access until 17:30pm)
Saturday, Sunday and holidays, from 13pm to 18pm (access until 17:30pm)