THE 34TH BIENAL DE SÃO PAULO INAUGURATES “THOUGH IT’S DARK, STILL I SING”

Looking forward for the 34^th São Paulo Biennial that will take place in 2020, the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo appointed Italian Jacopo Crivelli Visconti as the general curator of the biennial. Independent critic and curator, Crivelli Visconti lives in the Brazilian city where he completed a PhD in architecture at the Universidade de São Paulo.

American artist Deana Lawson produces portraits of contemporary Black life that are meticulously staged yet profoundly intimate. Deana Lawson’s solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel (Basel, Switzerland) takes place as one of the international collaborations of the 34th Bienal de São Paulo's - Faz escuro mas eu canto (Though it’s dark, still I sing)

The Fundação Bienal de São Paulo announces a free digital program, mostly bilingual, conceived after the decision to postpone the group show of the 34th Bienal de São Paulo – Faz escuro mas eu canto [Though it is dark, still I sing] to 2021. Aimed at diverse audiences, activities range from live streams with curators and guests to mini courses and interviews with the artists at their studios, as well as actions focused on an education-related audience, in line with the institution's strong educational tradition. 

The Pinacoteca de São Paulo presents Joan Jonas: Five Decades, the first solo exhibition in South America by the American pioneer of performance and video art Joan Jonas. The exhibition is curated by Berta Sichel, and is part of the network of collaborations of the 34th Bienal de São Paulo.

Gertrudes Altschul (1904–1962) was a pioneering figure in Brazilian modernist photography. Despite being acknowledged in the field in Brazil, her work is known only in specialized circles, having been scantly published and exhibited—something that this exhibition, the first in a museum, and its publication intend to rectify.

Designed to reflect the various aspects of the current transitional experience, the 7th Athens Biennale ECLIPSE aspires to address the viewers’ imagination of potential parallel worlds and futures. ECLIPSE activates a cross-cultural conversation among artistic voices that have historically been pushed to the periphery and orchestrates an experiential shift in art viewing.

Curated by Jaider Esbell, and within the context of the 34^th Bienal de São Paulo, the group exhibition Moquém_Surarî gathers contemporary artworks by indigenous artists. The exhibition at MAM São Paulo will include drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures referring to the visual transformations on the cosmological and the narrative Amerindian thinking.

“Moving with great fluidity between spirituality, the production of visuality, academic reflection and political action, Heráclito is explicit when he says that he wants to ‘act, in a symbolic way, on the devastating consequences of racism and social inequality that affect the black populations'." In this way, the curator and researcher Solange Farkas (Videobrasil and ex-MAM Bahía) summarizes the approach to the production of Ayrson Heráclito, a Bahian artist who won a retrospective at the MAR (Museu de Arte do Rio) and who had an important recent solo show at the Simões de Assis Gallery, in São Paulo.

One of the key works of the 34th São Paulo Biennial literally anchors the robust and uncomfortable presence between the interstitial areas of this modernist building, so questioned today. However, its meanings go beyond the perimeters of the construction and extend to, for example, some of the civic sculptures that populate public places throughout Brazil and that are also located in the surroundings.