The 9th Bienal do Mercosul / Porto Alegre launched its pedagogical program

The program took place at the Theatro São Pedro. It included a lecture on curiosity by Sundar Sarukkai, and the reception, to those willing, of a telepathic message sent by artist Eduardo Navarro from his home in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As part of this kick-off program, the Bienal announced the artists whose work will be featured in the exhibition, Portals, Forecasts, and Monotypes, as well as in its project “Island Sessions”.

The biennial is organized by the Fundação Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul, a nonprofit institution in Porto Alegre with the mission of developing cultural and educational visual arts projects to encourage dialogue amongst diverse communities. The title of this ninth edition of the biennial is, in Portuguese, Se o clima for favorável; in English, Weather Permitting. These titles are an invitation to ponder when and how, by whom and why, certain artworks and ideas gain or lack visibility at a given moment in time.

The promises of the 9th Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre are to identify, propose and repurpose changing belief systems and appraisals of experimentation and innovation. It intends to raise ontological and technological questions through artistic practice, object making and nodes of experience. This edition of the biennial can be considered an environment in which to encounter natural resources and material culture in a new light, and to speculate on the bases that have marked distinctions between discovery and invention, as well as the values of both sustainability and entropy.

To achieve this, the 9th Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre brings together visual art and other kinds of contributions to address the meeting points of nature and culture. It gathers works together that explore different kinds of atmospheric disturbances propelling travel and social displacement, technological advancement and world development, vertical expansions in space, and transversal explorations through time.

Participating Artists

Allora & Calzadilla, Anthony Arrobo, Tarek Atoui, Nicolás Bacal, Luis F. Benedit, Bik Van der Pol, Christian Bök, Liudvikas Buklys, Audrey Cottin, Elena Damiani, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Jason Dodge, Fernando Duval, Faivovich & Goldberg, Cao Fei, Mario García Torres, Hope Ginsburg, Juan José Gurrola, Hans Haacke, Malak Helmy, Fritzia Irizar, Eduardo Kac, Yuri Zlotnikov, Fernanda Laguna, Suwon Lee, George Levantis, Ana Laura López de la Torre, Gilda Mantilla & Raimond Chavez, Nicholas Mangan, Allan McCollum, Cinthia Marcelle, David Medalla, Marta Minujín, Aleksandra Mir, Eduardo Navarro, Edgar Orlaineta, Trevor Paglen, Tania Pérez Córdova, Pratchaya Phinthong, William Raban, Sara Ramo, Luiz Roque, Grethell Rasua, Robert Rauschenberg, Thiago Rocha Pitta, Daniel Santiago, Mira Schendel, Beto Shwafaty, Lucy Skaer, Tony Smith, Daniel Steegmann, Vassilakis Takis, Sandrine Teixido & Aurélien Gamboni, Erika Verzutti, Jorge Villacorta de Alta Tecnologia Andina con Rodrigo Derteano, Jessica Warboys, David Zink Yi and Michel Zózimo. Los artistas especialmente comisionados para crear imágenes móviles para las Sesiones isleñas son: Danilo Christidis, Fernanda Gassen, Romy Pocztaruk, Katia Prates, Leticia Ramos, Leonardo Remor, and Tiago Rivaldo.

Curatorial Team

Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy is the artistic director and chief curator of the 9ª Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre. The curatorial team includes: Mônica Hoff, ground curator and head of Cloud Formations; Raimundas Malašauskas, time curator; Bernardo de Souza, space curator; and curatorial cloud fellows: Sarah Demeuse, Daniela Pérez, Júlia Rebouças, and Dominic Willsdon. Luiza Proença is the editorial coordinator.