The 32nd Bienal de São Paulo: Live Uncertainty is a collective process that began a year ago with the involvement of teachers, students, artists, activists, indigenous leaders, educators, scientists and thinkers in Brazil and abroad. But it is also a collective process that is about to begin. Curated by Jochen Volz and co-curators Gabi Ngcobo (South Africa), Júlia Rebouças (Brazil), Lars Bang Larsen (Denmark) and Sofía Olascoaga (Mexico), the exhibition will be held from September 7th to December 11th, 2016 at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, featuring approximately 340 works by 81 artists and collectives and seeking to reflect on the possibilities offered by contemporary art to harbor and inhabit uncertainties.
Just as art unites thought and practice, reflection and action, the real wealth of Live Uncertainty will only emerge through visitors' encounter with the works, performances and public programs at the Bienal over the upcoming months.
"Today the Bienal's role is to act as a platform which actively promotes diversity, freedom and experimentation, at the same time exercising critical thought and proposing other possible realities," suggests Volz.
Eager to outline cosmological thought, environmental and collective intelligence and systemic and natural ecologies, Live Uncertainty is assembled like a garden in which themes and ideas freely intertwine into an integrated whole. It is not organized into chapters, but fundamentally based on the dialogues between different art works.
The exhibition looks to a series of historical artists who have provided a set of strategies which might appear particularly relevant today: the visual poetics of Wlademir Dias-Pino, Öyvind Fahlström's pioneering experiments with concrete poetry, Lourdes Castro's investigations of immateriality, Víctor Grippo's search for metaphysical transformations and Frans Krajcberg's continuing cry for the health of the planet, with sculptures made of coconut tree trunks and mangroves that articulate the entrance to the exhibition on the ground floor.
Press release courtesy of the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo
32ND BIENAL DE SÃO PAULO - INCERTEZA VIVA [LIVE UNCERTAINTY]
September 7 to December 11, 2016
Tue, Wed, Fri, Sun and holidays: 9am - 7pm (last entry 6pm)
Thur, Sat: 9am - 10pm (last entry 9pm)
Closed on Mondays
Free admission
São Paulo gallery spaces working to make art more accessible
