Just under half the artists whose work will feature in the forthcoming Bienal de São Paulo have been announced. Opening 6 September, the exhibition is curated by a team of four, including Manuel Borja-Villel, director of Madrid’s Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid; artist Grada Kilomba; curator Diane Lima; and anthropologist Hélio Menezes.
The show, titled Choreographies of the Impossible, is described gnomically as ‘a mutual project around multiple possibilities to choreograph the impossible. As the title already suggests, it is an invitation to radical imaginations about the unknown, or even about what figures as im/possible.’
The curators go on to explain: ‘We employ the term choreography to highlight the practice of drawing sequences of movements across time and space, generating multiple and new fractions, forms, images and possibilities, despite all the infeasibility and denial. We are interested in the rhythms, tools, strategies, and technologies, as well as in all symbolic, economic and juridical procedures that extra-disciplinary knowledges are able to promote, producing thus the flight, the refusal and their poetic exercises. Here we present the impossible indefinitely, for we comprehend that its generative violence also goes beyond what we can imagine. They are often immeasurable, indescribable and unimaginable. We are concerned, therefore, about describing, without reenacting. And so the choreography rehearsal begins.’
Announcing the initial list of 42 artists, from the final one hundred participants, the marketing material claims that 76 percent of participants come from the Global South and 92 percent are black, indigenous and/or non-white.
The exhibition will include: Aline Motta, Ana Pi and Taata Kwa Nkisi Mutá Imê, Anna Boghiguian, Ayrson Heráclito and Tiganá Santana, Bouchra Ouizguen, Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Daniel Lie, Dayanita Singh, Deborah Anzinger, Denilson Baniwa, Duane Linklater, Elda Cerrato, Elizabeth Catlett, Ellen Gallagher, Frente 3 de Fevereiro, Gabriel Gentil Tukano, Geraldine Javier, Igshaan Adams, Inaicyra Falcão, Julien Creuzet, Leilah Weinraub, Luiz de Abreu, Manuel Chavajay, Marilyn Boror Bor, Mounira Al-Solh, Nadal Walcott, Nadir Bouhmouch and Soumeya Ait Ahmed, Niño de Elche, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Philip Rizk, Rolando Castellón, Rosana Paulino, Sammy Baloji, Santu Mofokeng, Sarah Maldoror, Stanley Brouwn, Tadáskía, Tejal Shah, The Living and the Dead Ensemble, Torkwase Dyson, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Wifredo Lam.
