São Paulo – The 32nd São Paulo Art Biennial will feature work by artists from 33 countries, including two Arab ones: Alia Farid from Kuwait and Rayyane Tabet from Lebanon. Farid, Tabet and 79 other artists will be exhibiting. The exhibition is themed Live Uncertainty, and it will address the challenges and changes that contemporary living entails, as well as art’s role in reflecting those uncertainties. The Biennial will run from September 10th to December 12th at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion in São Paulo’s Ibirapuera Park.
Alia Farid was born in 1985 in Kuwait and currently lives between the Arab country and Puerto Rico. Her work straddles back and forth between the subject of this year’s biennial and Arab culture. Via email, she told ANBA that she is glad to participate, and is already working on the piece that she will bring to the show in Brazil. The Biennial’s curator, Germany’s Jochen Volz, first saw Farid’s work last year in an exhibition in London. That was where he invited her for the Brazilian exhibit.
Most artists in this Biennial are women, and many of the artists were born after 1970. Much of the artwork is previously unseen commissioned work. “Women are still underrepresented in the art world. It should be a refreshing change. I think it’s great,” Farid said.
Rayyane Tabet also hails from the Lebanese capital. A native of the city of Ashqout, Tabet deals with human challenges and works predominantly with sculptures. In one of her pieces, “Cyprus,” Tabet used a wooden boat that her father used in an unsuccessful attempt to flee Lebanon for Cyprus, over 30 years ago.
Many of Tabet’s works allude to the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (TAPLine), a joint venture formed by United States companies to facilitate oil transportation from Saudi Arabia.
In a press release, the Biennial’s curator asserts that the guest artists’ works bring forth strategies of how to live with uncertainty. “We are seeking to understand diversity, to look at the unknown and question what we assume to be known. We view the different knowledges of our world as complementary rather than exclusionary,” Volz said in the press release.
The Biennial was co-curated by Gabi Ngcobo, of South Africa; Júlia Rebouças, of Brazil; Lars Bang Larsen, of Denmark; and Sofia Olascoaga, of Mexico. It will feature artists and collectives from Colombia, Brazil, Zambia, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Sweden, South Africa, Jamaica, Cameroon, Belgium, Poland, the United States, Turkey, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand, South Korea, Mexico, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Israel, Zimbabwe, Guatemala, Lithuania, Finland, France, Peru, Italy, Australia, Switzerland and Spain. Some of the exhibiting artists will show work they are creating in artist residencies in São Paulo and in travels throughout Brazil.
32nd São Paulo Art Biennial – Live Uncertainty
10 de setembro a 11 de dezembro de 2016
Mais informações: http://www.bienal.org.br/
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*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
