The last street vendor hawking mangoes in the evening Cacimbo of September 19th was making her way around the bend in the sidewalk next to the garden of the Guimarães Rosa Institute (IGR), in Luanda, where the Brazilian chargé d’affaires in Angola, Eduardo Lessa, was inaugurating, surrounded by the warmth of the guests, the 35th Bienal de S. Paulo, for the first time in its tour of African lands.
Vista da instalação Habitar el color, de Carlos Bunga durante a 35a Bienal de São Paulo. 10/10/2023 © Levi Fanan / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
Curated by Diane Lima, Grada Kilomba, Hélio Menezes and Manuel Borja-Villel, the tour in Luanda brought together eight artists who present distinct but complementary perspectives, considering the cultural and historical pluralities of the Americas, Europe and Africa. Among the artists who exhibit audiovisual works, Aline Motta addresses ancestral and family memories; Bouchra Ouizguen uses dance and performance in dialogue with Moroccan traditions; Ilze Wolff investigates the historical impacts of architecture and the process of urbanization in South Africa; Raquel Lima develops a poetry-performance centred on issues of race and gender; Sarah Maldoror, through her films, documents the political process based on the collective experience of African decolonization; and Trinh T. Minh-ha uses cinema to question traditional ethnography and the exercise of looking.
After the speeches, the Biennial’s education team took part in a guided tour of the works on display inside the IGR. Inhabiting Color, the main piece in the Institute’s large exhibition space, is by Portuguese artist Carlos Bunga. It is an exuberant installation of paint dripping onto the floor of the room, between the pillars of the main staircase, evoking the oceans in a pink dawn. Visitors could take off their shoes to feel the freedom of art entering through the soles of their feet and into their souls. The work highlighted elements of nature (earth, tree trunks, rocks), proposing a more intimate relationship with the work of art. In his own words, Bunga believes that “This is the magical part of the artist, because we produce works where gesture is still present. Art is an extension of our body, it can save us, it is therapy”.
Registro das obras de Bouchra Ouizguen durante a itinerância da 35ª Bienal de São Paulo no Museo Nacional de Arte (MNA), em La Paz, Bolívia. 20/08/2024. © Christian Eugenio / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
The exhibition also featured Baptism, another three-dimensional work by Angolan artist Januário Jano. The work is an installation of photographs that the Brazilian writer Igor de Albuquerque interprets as follows: “In the installation [Baptism] (2019), we observe a set of twenty photographs that show Januário Jano taking off his white clothes. The image as a whole draws attention for its exuberance. However, in the research of the materials, any disinterested contemplation is dissolved: the white clothes are memories of the civilizing impositions of the Portuguese colonizers on the Angolans. The fabric, 100% cotton, refers to the fields of Baixa do Cassange, where in 1961 there was a massacre that fueled the fight for Angola’s liberation”.
Before the inauguration, a press conference took place in the IGR amphitheatre, in which the head of the cultural sector of the Brazilian embassy in Angola, Luísa Tatsch, focused on the aspects of the strong diplomacy between Brazil and Angola, two sister countries united on the banks of the Atlantic. The choice of Luanda as part of the tour is a recognition of the historical and cultural ties between Brazil and Angola.
durante a 35a Bienal de São Paulo. 04/09/2023 © Levi Fanan / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
For the president of the São Paulo Biennial Foundation, Andrea Pinheiro, “the itinerancy of the choreographies of the impossible in Luanda reflects the commitment to expand dialogue between the two countries and promoting art as a tool for social transformation. In Angola, a country with a history deeply connected to ours, this partnership takes on special relevance, as it reaffirms our institutional commitment to rescuing and presenting common narratives and stories between our peoples,” she says.
The 35th São Paulo Biennial also carries out two complementary educational projects, including training with the city’s teams of mediators and educators for the general public. Agostinho João, coordinator of the Biennale’s cultural mediators at the Guimarães Rosa Institute, reveals that “The mediation team, made up of 9 mediators aged between 23 and 34, was created two months before the exhibition opened with the aim of providing specialized support to visitors, mainly for group visits such as primary and secondary schools, associations, universities and other institutions from different sectors.”
The inaugural tour of the São Paulo Biennial in Luanda, choreographies of the impossible, marks a significant moment of cultural exchange between Brazil and Angola. With a diverse range of practices that reflect on complex histories, the exhibition fosters meaningful dialogue as well as a commitment, through education and community engagement, to make art accessible broadly.
