Notes related to Brazil

The exhibition Contar Rutinas (Counting Routines) dedicated by the Cerezales Antonino and Cinia Foundation to the work of Ana Amorim (São Paulo, Brazil, 1956) includes a selection of actions and performative works and installations that reflect the activity of the Brazilian artist from the 1980s to the present. The architecture of this exhibition is marked by the artist's daily conceptual and performative routines, reflecting their influence in the results of monumental dimensions.

The São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) presents the exhibition Serigrafistas Queer: Liberdade para as sensibilidades (Freedom for sensibilities) from December 13 to March 16, 2025. It addresses themes such as the struggle for reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, the political approach to the HIV crisis, and the celebration of diverse affections and identities.

ALTTRA Foundation organizes in three spaces in Palma, on the island of Mallorca, an exhibition that addresses the theme of insularity and its role and idiosyncrasy in a globalized world through several works by Cildo Meireles (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1948). The works chosen, corresponding to five different periods of the artistic production of one of the referents of Brazilian neo-conceptualism, trace a journey through some of the themes and investigations that the artist has developed throughout his life, from fortune and chance to the perception of the physically invisible but perceptible, such as sound, or the relationship between space and its use.

Barcelona's Center of Image La Virreina (La Virreina Centre de la Imatge) is dedicating an extensive exhibition to Regina Silveira (Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1939), one of the multimedia artists and key figures of Latin American conceptual art. Within the exhibition line of the center, which advocates the exploration of the aesthetic and ideological languages of images, this show curated by Isabella Lenzi covers a wide range of the Brazilian artist's research, experimentation and artistic production, particularly that developed with technical reproduction techniques and the circulation of images.

Inhotim is presenting three new projects at the end of 2024, in which the protagonists are Rebeca Carapiá, Pipilotti Rist and Rivane Neuenschwander. Three very different strategies by names of different visibilities and generations, which help to forge a moment in the institution that seems more connected to the fascinating and special nature of the place, without leaving aside lively questions about the strange days we are living through.

The Bass is presenting the exhibition asume vivid astro focus – XI, an enveloping installation of patterned wallpaper and decal graphics that spans floor to ceiling in a setting created for works by more than thirty artists. On view from November 13, 2024.

ICA Miami presents the first US museum exhibition of the late Afro-Brazilian painter Rubem Valentim (b. 1922, Salvador, Brazil; d. 1991, São Paulo). A singular voice in modernist painting and geometric abstraction, Valentim explored the medium’s formal concerns and social resonances across cultures and spiritual practices. This exhibition focuses on works Valentim produced in the 1960s, and the transformation of his work and thinking during this time.

The approach and review of the work that the multidisciplinary Portuguese-Brazilian artist Fernando Lemos (Lisbon, Portugal, 1926 - São Paulo, Brazil, 2019) made in the framework of his relationship with Japan is the reason for the exhibitions that two centers of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation dedicate to his figure. It is worth remembering here that both of them transit in the Japanese concept that stands as the central axis of the new headquarters of the Centro de Arte Moderno, recently inaugurated, and on which the dialogue between both curatorial proposals pivots.

Under the general curatorship of Bonaventure by Soh Bejen Ndikung, the 36th São Paulo Biennial announces its title, curatorial concept, collaborators and visual identity, in addition to informing about an important change in its exhibition period. The title will be: Nem todo viandante anda estradas / Da humanidade como prática [Not All Travelers Walk Roads / Of Humanity as Practice].

The Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo presents the 38th Panorama of Brazilian Art: Mil Graus [A thousand degrees], an exhibition curated by Germano Dushá and Thiago de Paula Souza, and co-curated by Ariana Nuala, whose title evokes the idea of a “heat-limit,” where everything is transformed, referring to the intense climatic and metaphysical conditions that challenge and lead to inevitable processes of transmutation. In this edition, the MAM biennial exhibition presents 34 artists from 16 Brazilian states.

The Hirshhorn Museum will present the first US museum survey and largest US exhibition of work by identical twin brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo (b. São Paulo, Brazil, 1974), known globally as OSGEMEOS—Portuguese for “the twins.” The yearlong, full-floor presentation will bring together approximately 1,000 artworks, photographs, and archival materials to highlight the trajectory of their collaborative multidisciplinary practice, including the roots of their fantastical artistic language, inspired by their upbringing in urban Brazil.

The artistic collective from Rio de Janeiro OPAVIVARÁ! intervenes in the space of the Capilla de Afuera of the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville with its Rede social, a sensorial and materialized symbology with which the Brazilians invite the spectator to place himself in a position to negotiate and cooperate with his fellow men and women. The intervention, consisting of the unfolding of fabric hammocks that acquire the rhythm and cadence that the visitor imprints with his movement and presence and that adds sounds of snoring, follows the group's premise of building spaces and devices that offer a collaborative experience.

Why highlight stories that often remain on the periphery of artistic discourse? Adriano Pedrosa justifies his curatorial decision with works by 331 artists -mostly from the global south- that open the way to powerful narratives. Finally, we see the axis being twisted. It is difficult to escape the white gaze, more so to move authentically through a Eurocentric space. Given this, the communicative reach of figuration serves to challenge the symbolic order of domination and destabilize the colonial project. The stories that are made explicit and the narratives of magic and everyday life help to recognize without revictimizing. 

A man is waiting. In elegant clothes, the figure is placed in the center of what looks like a hotel bar. He plays the lead role on a sort of stage, an interior that is something of a cage, something of a scenic locus, as if a possible flirtation or a desired encounter would provide some catalysis of emergence, a quick enjoyment, an intense release, however short and finite, perhaps dismantling a routine of limits. Man in Blue (1954) works as a synthesis of the not so extensive but very significant gathering of the celebrated Francis Bacon (1909-1992) in A Beleza da Carne (The Beauty of Meat), at Masp (São Paulo Museum of Art). The exhibition is curated by Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director of the institution and curator of the current edition of the Venice Biennale, the 60th, on show until November in the Italian city, and co-curated by Laura Cosendey.

Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee – museo Madre present Vai, vai, Saudade, a collective exhibition which offers a poetic pathway, exploring a series of stories related to the art produced in Brazil since WWII. Curated by Cristiano Raimondi.

The 14th Mercosur Biennial will be held between May 27 and June 1, 2025. The exhibition, which was originally planned to be held this year in Porto Alegre, was rescheduled as a result of the climatic catastrophes that affected southern Brazil.

The exhibition Lia D Castro: Everywhere and Nowhere, at MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand is the artist’s first solo show in a museum, and brings together 36 works, most of which are figurative paintings. The selected works explore scenarios where affection, dialogue and imagination become important tools for social transformation.

The next Pompidou Museum project in Foz do Iguaçu will be presented by Luciana Pereira, Secretary of Culture of the State of Paraná, Brazil, at the Pinta Sud | ASU conference, to be held at the Casa de la Integración (CAF) on August 8, 2024. This will be the first Pompidou Center in Latin America.

The exhibition of the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale - Stranieri Ovunque (Foregneirs Everywhere) - curated by Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, presents 331 artists, significantly more than the usual number. More than a third of those artists come from Latin America.

In Brazil's largest open-air contemporary art center, with an enviable connection between nature and visuality, nautical elements have curiously been the driving force behind important commissioned works. Now at Inhotim, they are central to the metaphors that evoke previous unwanted flows of circulation and, at the same time, act as a reference so that they are not repeated - in this case, the slave trade originating in Africa, whose survivors worked, among other activities, in the exploitation of minerals that sustained the economy of this part of Brazil, today, Minas Gerais.

Ernesto Neto (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1964) presents Nosso Barco Tambor Terra at Lisbon's Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), an impressive large-scale installation with which he evokes and stages the crossing of different cultures and the relationships between individuals from different continents.

Rosana Paulino. Amefricana is the most complete exhibition outside Brazil of this artist born in Sao Paulo in 1967. The exhibition at Malba brings together a group of works made during 30 years, between 1994 and 2024, from the perspective that the Atlantic inscribes in the Afro-descendant America.

The Fundação Biennale de São Paulo announced that Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung will be the chief curator of the 36th São Paulo Biennale, to be held during the second half of 2025.

The Italian-born Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino and the Paris-based Turkish artist Nil Yalter are the recipients of the Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia - Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere.

The EFG Latin America Art Award, in association with ArtNexus, announced Eduardo Berliner of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as the nominated artist for its annual acquisition award. The award will be presented at Pinta Miami 2024.

Until this April 2024, one of the recent galleries of the Pinacoteca Contemporânea - the new annex of the traditional and active Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, which opened in 2023 - has become a special locus, where past and future, tradition and modernity, nostalgia and dazzle, fortress and ruin, among other poetic axes, present themselves to a visitor who is between perplexity and fascination. The author of this suspension of time is the Chinese artist Cao Fei (Guanghzou, 1978), one of the key artists of the contemporary world, who has her first solo show in South America, after (more discreet) appearances at the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010) and the 9th Mercosul Biennial (2013), in Porto Alegre, in the south of the country.

The exhibition at Pivô not only celebrates Carolee Schneemann’s legacy but also expands on her ideas and proposes a dialogue between her works and two contemporary artists: Diego Bianchi and Márcia Falcão.

Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) presents, from March 22 to July 28, 2024, the exhibition Francis Bacon: The Beauty of Meat. Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Laura Cosendey, and Isabela Ferreira Loures, the exhibition aims to highlight how the artist, with his innovative and impactful painting, paved the way for a queer presence in visual culture.

Batalha Centro de Cinema, in Porto, presents the exhibition Sobrevoo by Jonathas de Andrade.

North-American artist Melissa Cody featured at MASP the exhibition Webbed Skies, with curatorship of Isabella Rjeille and Ruba Katrib.