The thirty sixth Bienal de São Paulo is titled Not All Travellers Stroll Roads—Of Humanity as Observe. It takes its identify from a poem by the Afro-Brazilian author Conceição Evaristo titled Da calma e do silêncio (Of Calm and Silence). The 1990 poem was printed within the Cadernos Negros (Black Notebooks) sequence, an ongoing publication based in São Paulo within the late Seventies that promotes and preserves African diasporic literature in Brazil, a rustic the place this type of literature has been traditionally marginalised in mainstream publishing homes.
The textual content of the poem “gives a language to talk of the unspeakable and teaches us that silence just isn’t a void—it’s a place of accumulation, of ancestry and of inside resistance”, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, the chief curator of the 2025 Bienal de São Paulo, tells The Artwork Newspaper. “Evaristo’s work invitations us to pay attention to what’s typically excluded from dominant narratives. Within the context of the Bienal, which is usually perceived as hypervisible and hypermediated, her poetics push us to carve out moments of stillness and introspection.” The curator says that he and his group requested themselves: “How can we exhibit silence?”
The primary a part of the title, Not All Travellers Stroll Roads, references “these whose paths are nonlinear, whose journeys are erased, undocumented or ancestral”, Ndikung says, whereas Of Humanity as Observe “insists that to be human just isn’t a hard and fast state, however a steady and unfinished act”.
Ndikung labored with the curators Alya Sebti, Keyna Eleison, Anna Roberta Goetz and Thiago de Paula Souza. The biennial group additionally contains the German publicist Henriette Gallus, within the newly shaped function of technique and communications adviser. “One of the vital highly effective facets of this Bienal is the deeply collaborative spirit at its core,” Sebti says.
This 12 months’s biennial options 125 artists, of which 28 are Brazilian. There are additionally a number of artists represented who’ve by no means exhibited work within the nation earlier than—similar to Frank Bowling, who shall be represented by a career-spanning set up of 25 work and works on paper.
Round half of the works within the biennial are new commissions and shall be unveiled in the course of the preview on 5 September. These embrace displays by the artists Valuable Okoyomon, Theresah Ankomah, Gê Viana, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Andrew Roberts, Emeka Ogboh, Laure Prouvost and Myriam Omar Awadi.
Exterior of the primary pavilion, a brand new efficiency programme known as Tributaries can have its premiere. It was created in collaboration with the cultural centre Casa do Povo, a São Paulo establishment based within the Fifties and recognized for its progressive strategy. Casa do Povo has “a big historical past as a spot of resistance”, Goetz says. “It embodies the spirit of this biennial par excellence.”
Casa do Povo’s creative director, Benjamin Seroussi, and Daniel Blanga Gubbay of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels have organised a roster of performances that embrace rhythmic parades and readings by the Brazilian choreographer Marcelo Evelin. Boxe Autônomo, the singer Dorothée Munyaneza, Alexandre Paulikevitch and Mexa may also carry out within the coming months as a part of the sequence.
thirty sixth Bienal de São Paulo, Not All Travellers Stroll Roads—Of Humanity as Observe, 6 September 2025-11 January 2026
