O USP Contemporary Art Museum presents the exhibition Plant Bifurcations, based on transdisciplinary dialogue between contemporary art, archaeology, anthropology, architecture, and traditional knowledge. Curated by Karen Shiratori (Brazil) and Étienne de France (France), the exhibition promotes and cultivates critical reflections on the multiple and dissonant meanings of agriculture in different social contexts, and the complex ways in which humans and plants relate. Through counter-narratives, the exhibition questions the hegemonic meaning of agriculture as a unique and linear civilizational landmark, proposing other ways of conceiving the links between humans and plant diversity.
Integrated into the programming of France-Brazil 2025 SeasonThe exhibition “invites us to think about creation as a process attentive to the relationships that constitute and sustain the space we inhabit,” says Fernanda Pitta, professor at MAC USP and responsible for the curatorial supervision of the show. The works—videos, installations, archaeological records, plans, photographs, paintings, and documents—allow for intersections between art, science, and traditional knowledge to address themes such as ecological collapse, regeneration practices, social inequality, urbanity in its diversity, traditional ways of life in transformation, and the need to rethink our relationships with the land, food, and the cycles of life.
“What emerges when we interrogate these narratives from listening to Indigenous practices, traditional and scientific knowledge, and the language of contemporary art?” asks the curator. In the exhibition, artistic production is articulated with practices of cultivation, research, listening, and coexistence, recognizing that worlds are made in association with many other beings. In a moment marked by environmental and social crises, this initiative proposes not only an exhibition, but encounters that promote regeneration and the production of diversity.
By hosting Bifurcações Vegetais, MAC USP reaffirms its commitment as a platform for expanded ways of creating and learning, "recognizing that caring for life in common is also an aesthetic, ethical and political gesture," says Fernanda Pitta.
Service
Exhibition Plant Bifurcations
From November 25th to February 22th
Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 21 pm
