The 31st São Paulo Biennial (Brazil) has been announced and will take place with the opening scheduled for September 6. This year’s event is titled “How to live with things that don’t exist”. Created by a team of curators including Charles Esche, Galit Eilat, Nuria Enguita Mayo, Pablo Lafuente and Oren Sagiv, with associated curators Benjamin Seroussi and Luiza Proença, the event is set to be one of the high points of the Autumn international art calendar. The power of art will be the center of the project, and for the first time the poster refers to “live”, other versions will be highlighted as “speak”, “using”, “fight” or “learn” things that do not exist in different times and platforms.
Although more information in the digital age is increasingly changing the world, there seems to be a reduction in the diversity of our social frameworks, resulting in the emergence of an oppressor “common sense.” If it’s possible to mention for example the contemporary economic model that finds no resistance, or the cold logic of efficiency that ignores history and culture. Things that do not exist are precisely the aspects of human experience and our emotions that are often found outside language. Its touches the limits of our understanding and involve issues relating to the visible and the invisible, the collectivity and conflict (as fact and as a tool), the transformative power of art and culture, the ability to imagine other possible worlds.
This was the curator team describing the principal idea to Sao Paulo Biennal. The concept to the cover was developed by Indian artist Prabhakar Pachpute and results of talks from curators and Biennal’s Fundation design team. The draw is a fragile structure in the shape of The Tower of Babel carry by humans bodies, the idea is besides the uncertainties of the world, the collective can walk together empowered physically and spiritual. The poster adopts the font family based on the work of English calligrapher Julian Waters and the rest of the applications use the letter Arrus created by Richard Lipton.
Words: Douglas Negrisolli Cover: Courtesy of 31˚ São Paulo Biennal – Brazil