Roaming Biennal: Interview with Charles Esche

‘How to (…) things that don’t exist – an exhibition developed out of the 31st São Paulo Biennial” curated by Charles Esche, Galit Eilat and Oren Sagiv.

This partnership with Serralves Museum in 2015 was the first time in its more than 60 years’ history that the São Paulo Biennial travelled outside of Brazil. Founded in 1951, the Biennial of São Paulo is the second oldest art biennial in the world, after the Venice Biennial. Originally, the biennial’s objective has been to show international contemporary art in Brazil and to bring Brazilian art closer to an international audience. The year, in which the exhibition was shown at Serralves Museum in the city of Porto in Portugal, this purpose has been taken to a more complex level. Reconfigured from the original 75 artists showed in 2014 to a show with 28 artists, you can say that “it has a more intense taste” as curator Charles Esche commented in the interview conducted by REDE.

This year, in 2016, the next São Paulo Biennial will present its new edition, and return to Brazil from September 10, to December 11, at Pavillion Ciccillo Matarazzo, supposedly in a more creative and educative level. “Incerteza Viva” is the curatorial statement for the 32st edition (En. trans. “Living Uncertainty”), which seeks to explore new alternative approaches, concerned with the unknown or with our way of being in the world – themes dealing with cosmology, ecology, extinction, myths, traditions, and living practices. Until now, the São Paulo Biennial has about 54 artists confirmed, wishing to extend this list to 90 artists. Some of the names this year announced include artists from Portugal as e.g. Carla Filipe, Lourdes Castro, Priscila Fernandes, artists whose work relates to installation, collage practice and performance art.

As for the 31^st São Paulo Biennial shown at Serralves Museum in Porto, Portugal, we had the opportunity to catch up with Charles Esche, chief curator of the 2014-edition, who shared with us the following considerations, that refer to a more complex questioning of the Biennial as such.

Interview with Charles Esche

REDE: Why organize an itinerary of the S. Paulo Biennial outside of Brasil?

CE: I think there is a number of reasons: There is an institutional reason that is also about a particular pride that Brazil has concerning the project of the Biennial; there might be an idea of “reverse colonialism” behind it, what we already talked about, that Brazil can come back to Portugal and show that it has come to the point where it can show an exhibition in Portugal. Because, when you look at the history of the S. Paulo Biennial it was about bringing Europe to Brazil, and this is something that’s embedded in the tradition of the Ciccillo Matarazzo Foundation. This family comes from Italy and wants to have a European existence in Brazil, ignoring kind of not living any more in Europe. And São Paulo was part of that ‘ignoring’ that they were in a different environment now. They wanted to recreate the high-cultured environment from Europe in their own place. And they did it of course with a twist that came with it: Brazilian Modernism and Modernity. Still with the basic idea that Europe was the font of high-culture and education. […]

So bringing the Sao Paulo Biennial to Europe, to Portugal, is to say: this process is finished, and now the reverse can happen. Brazil can come to Europe and show something that Europe cannot yet fully understand or grasp. And I think, that’s the basis of it.

REDE:  It is the imaginary and the concept of this edition that you bring, how you [the curators] perceived and understood the problematic of Brazil today; and that is the context that is coming. So it’s not an art historian that is talking, because you said in an interview to Carolina Menezes in 2013, that a Biennial should be contemporary and a Museum should be a historic venue.[CH: Yes.]

So now that you’re bringing a Biennial to a Museum, are you doing a historical exhibition? 

CH: I think a Biennial’s job is to be contemporary, and a Museum needs to tell histories. But I also think it is possible to do contemporary exhibitions in a museum. […] I would say histories, there is no single history, [a museum has] the responsibility to tell a chronology, so this focus on the contemporary in this special context of Serralves is legitimate inside this context; we did little changes, with works from the Serralves collection in the middle of the Biennial exhibition like Cildo Meireles or Edward Krasiński, but of course cannot replace the Biennial.

Also there is an educational program, that is pretty much based on what we did in Brazil; we propose different themes for this ‘program in time’, based on the idea of free education, as a radical alternative home-made education rather than state-made education, the idea of “reverse Colonialism” which is what you’re interested in as well, the process of how the negotiation between the different communities is conducted in the former colonies and with their former motherlands.

In the end, the whole exhibition is a critique.

REDE: Why Portugal to show the 31^st Biennial?

CE: The opportunity was to do it in Portugal, because of the interest and the founding, and of what I said before, also because we thought, it would be very interesting to revisit what we had done a year before, as curators, that’s a great learning experience. Also, I think Portugal makes sense because of the history and everything, also [ironic] because you don’t have to translate everything [laughs]. Sometimes there are simple reasons for what you do.

REDE: You chose 28 artists from 75 from the original Biennial version. Is there a change in discourse and what has changed?

CE: I think a lot of things have disappeared – there were for example a lot of things about transgender – sexual indiscretion I suppose in a way, I think – which we felt, was less relevant here. We had a work about abortion, for example in Brazil that is less relevant to the situation here, because here it’s legalized now. As the context changed, the show changed, too. For example, transgender, is a normal part of Brazilian society, but here, of course it’s there, but it doesn’t have the same presence as in Brazil.

Another issue addressed by this installation is religion, absolutely. This is also in the title… These are the things we have to deal with and on the top of it, we load it with the whole values, prejudices, believes, etc.

The reason of the value of art is because of the ‘belief-system’ around it. Religion is very important in Brazil, you have the African religions, you have a huge Evangelical drive in Brazil, but here religion has a big impact as well.

So we talk about Education, about Reverse Colonialism, about Religion, because also here these themes make sense to be addressed.