São Paulo – “How to (…) things that don’t exist” is the theme of the São Paulo Art Biennial this year. In its 31st edition, the world’s largest art exhibition of its kind invited artists to “fill in” the gap in its initial title. In the exhibition, which will continue until December 7th, visitors will be able to see 81 installations and observe how over 100 artists from several countries, including six from Arab nations, completed the organizers’ proposition.
According to this edition’s associate curator, Luiza Proença, the idea is to show the public that there is no specific theme for the pieces, and that the proposition emerged from surveys and meetings held in Brazil and Latin America. “‘How to talk about things that don’t exist’ is a title we came up with to suggest this experience and the fact that art can bring up things that don’t exist yet, either because they have not been invented or are invisible in our contemporary life,” Proença told ANBA.
The Arabs who designed projects for the exhibition include an Egyptian woman, two Lebanese and three Palestinians. Anna Boghiguian, from Egypt, proposes in her installation “Cities by the river” a “trip” through the Nile River, the longest river in the world and fundamental to the formation of Egypt. In this trip, the visitor will pass through a tunnel composed of honeycombs filled with paintings. On the outer walls, several poems and pictures narrate stories about the river.
In another work, Lebanon’s Tony Chakar questions the art-technology relationship. His piece “One Hundred Thousand Solitudes/On Other Worlds That Are on This One” is comprised of photos of people he took, randomly, in several cities across many countries. On top of each image, a poem: “Tense as in a delirium, I drank /from her eyes, the clear sky where storms sprout / the sweetness which enthralls and the pleasure that kills” (free translation) is one of such poems.
The artist claims that his objective was to take photos of landscapes, but modern cameras always search for faces because they have built-in facial recognition systems. Ultimately, he questions the art-technology relationship.
The insurgents
“The Incidental Insurgents 2012-2014” was conceived by the duo Basel Abbas, who were born in Cyprus, used to live in Ramallah, West Bank, and currently live in New York, and by Ruanne Abou-Rahme, who was born and currently lives in the United States, but was raised in Ramallah. The two-part installation employs the concepts of anarchism and rebelliousness to express the artists’ desire, anger and questioning.
In the first part of the project, a short film shows the artists travelling by car across the Palestinian territories. Later in this segment of the piece, in a messy office, the artists place books and texts referring to well-known 20th century figures associated with rebellion. One of the objects is the book “The savage detectives”, by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, which narrates an unassuming trip of two young poets with questionable facts. The second part, “Unforgivable years”, makes a reference to literary creation. The visual setting is practically the same as in the first space, but the theme of the drawings, drafts, and books is different.
Walid Raad, from Lebanon, surveyed the Arab influence in São Paulo in the first half of this year before creating a work for the Biennial. The result of this survey is the piece “Letters to the reader” with several panels representing Arab architecture. At the end, the last panel “explains” the previous eleven.
The original designs were created in 1931 by Suha Traboulsi and found in the archives of São Paulo’s Syrian-Lebanese Hospital in 2012. The artist felt that Arab art was being lost and built the panels as a possible “resurrection” in a city such as São Paulo, which she deemed “hospitable” to this retrieval.
"Mujawara", or “neighborhood” in Arabic, is a joint project by Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal, from Lebanon, and the Contrafilé group. The piece goes beyond the exhibition and is part of an educational project, “Campus in Camps”, based on the reality of Palestinian refugees and depicting community coexistence and the use of spaces.
“We always think of sharing contexts. So, in ‘Mujawara’ we have the collaboration of a Palestinian group with a Brazilian one, as both work on very similar questions (the relationships of several communities with the land) in two countries which are very far apart," said Luiza Proença.
"In the case of Walid Raad, an artist who has been researching the recent phenomenon of modern and contemporary ‘Islamic’ Arab art in the world, we thought about the fact that Brazil has a larger Lebanese community than Lebanon itself and a booming art market,” the associate curator added.
Focus on conflict
The themes of conflict, confrontation and uprisings are part of many of the works in this edition of the Biennial. This is the case of Brazilian, Latin American, European and Arab works such as “The insurgents”. The theme, however, was not an imposition, although this issue has also been used by the curators.
“In the curatorship we used the word ‘conflict’ and we actually say that many of the projects are based on unsolved relationships and conflicts: between different groups, between contradictory versions of the same story or between incompatible ideals. But, along with this idea of conflict, we also bring the notions of ‘collectivity’ – because the dynamics generated by the conflicts point toward the need to act as a group –, ‘imagination’ and ‘transformation’ – seeing as art and artists can imagine a different world and point toward a change. These ideas are intertwined in many ways and are present in the projects at the 31st Biennial in many forms,” says Proença. In addition to the works displayed, there is a parallel schedule, with poem recitals and presentations.
Service
31st São Paulo Art Biennial
Ending on December 7th
Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Sundays and holidays, from 9 am to 9 pm
Wednesdays and Saturdays, from 9am to 10 pm (free admission until 9 pm)
Closed on Mondays
Venue: Ibirapuera Park, Gate 3, Bienal Pavilion, São Paulo, Brazil
Free admission
Information: www.31bienal.org.br/en/
*Translated by Rodrigo Mendonça
