São Paulo – Sitting in front of a camera, a middle-aged man recounts his earliest childhood memory. “I would always arrive at school late because I was tending to the animals. The teacher knew it and one day, knowing I would be late once again, he had all students in the class hide, so I would think I had been the first to arrive. I got inside, sat at my desk and waited. Then the entire class got in clapping and cheering me, because I had been the first to enter the classroom,” he says.
The account of the Turkish man is but one among hundreds of stories that comprise the exhibition “6 billion Others,” being held at the São Paulo Art Museum (Masp) until July 10th. Comprising 5,600 accounts, the exhibition features stories from people whose names are not disclosed, from 78 countries, in 11 hours’ worth of videos that discuss themes such as love, hope, fear and future.
The countries where the interviews were made include Brazil and ten Arab countries: Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Syria, Palestine and Tunisia. “In the late 1950s, we only had Iraqi dates to eat,” says the Palestinian. “I would dream of eating bread, because we didn’t have it anymore, we had no work under the Israeli occupation,” says a man in his account.
The exhibition was designed by photographer, journalist and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, was inaugurated in 2009, in Paris, and has been visited by 3.5 million people in several European and Asian cities. Before the end of the year, the videos, directed by filmmakers Sibylle d’Orgeval and Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire, will be taken to Spain, Russia and Palestine. The Brazilian exhibition also features the video Somos São Paulo (We Are São Paulo), directed by Lucas Bambozzi and Kika Nicolela, featuring stories of people from various parts of Brazil and the world over who live in the city.
Divided into eight tents, the exhibition separates the accounts by theme: Love Stories, Challenges of Life, Childhood Dreams/Dreams and renunciations, Witnesses of the Climate/Progress, Meaning of Life, Earliest Memories, Being at Home/Leaving your Country and Rwanda, stories of a genocide, dedicated to the memories of the roughly 800,000 people who were slaughtered in the country in 1994, during the civil war. There are two spaces that feature behind-the-scenes videos and the accounts of people who live in São Paulo.
Visitors may also get to know the story of a woman from New Zealand who has been married for six years and is only now falling in love with her husband; the account of the Afghan man whose parents were killed by the Taleban, and who only found refuge in France, a country that accepted him but gave him no rights; and the life of the Iraqi refugee who lives in Syria and has no hope left of returning to her country. “I hope that one day my children, Abdallah and Ruqaya, will return to Iraq, but I will not be with them,” she says.
Service
Exhibition “6 billion Others”
Place: São Paulo Art Museum (Masp)
Avenida Paulista, 1578 São Paulo
Time: Tuesdays to Sundays and holidays, from 11:00 am to 06:00 pm. Thursdays, from 11:00 am to 08:00 pm.
Tickets: 15 reals (US$ – full price) and 7 reals (US$ – half-price for students). Admittance is free for people up to 10 years and older than 60. Admittance is free for all on Tuesdays.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
