Curatorial team of the 35th Bienal de Sao Paulo Hélio Menezes, Grada Kilomba, Diane Lima and Manuel Borja Villel. Courtesy Bienal de Sao Paulo
IBA Stage LIVE: 35th Bienal de São Paulo
September 3, 2023 (Sunday)
4:00pm (São Paulo/GMT-3)
We are grateful to the curatorial team of the 35th Bienal de São Paulo for their participation in the upcoming IBA Stage which takes place just days before the opening of choreographies of the impossible. Given the extraordinary circumstances having Hélio Menezes, Grada Kilomba, Diane Lima and Manuel Borja Villel, who developed the project of choreographies of the impossible with us to discuss their vision is a rare opportunity for IBA Stage to give all of our members and associates a feeling of the Biennale.
Manuel Borja-Villel – Lives in Madrid, Spain. Following completion of a doctorate in Art History from the City University of New York, from 2008 to 2022, he was Director of the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, Spain), responsible for the development and the profound reinterpretation of the museum’s collection. In recent years, Reina Sofía has strengthened its position as a reference for cultural production through the work carried out with an asymmetrical network of institutions that includes, among others, museums, universities and independent institutions. He directed the Fundación Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona, Spain) from its creation in 1990 until 1998, and made the foundation an experimental institution with a program centered on institutional criticism. Already at the head of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona from 1998 to 2008, he placed public management at the service of the citizen’s agenda, creating a place of dissent through radical pedagogy, criticism and institutional experimentation. He reflects on these and other themes in his latest book: Campos magnéticos: Escritos de arte y Política (Madrid: Arcadia, 2020).
Grada Kilomba – Lives in Berlin, Germany. Interdisciplinary artist, writer and holder of a PhD in philosophy from the Free University of Berlin, Germany, Kilomba has taught at several international universities, such as the University of Arts in Vienna, Austria. Her work raises questions around knowledge, power and cyclic violence, and has been exhibited at significant events such as the 10th Berlin Biennale; Documenta 14; La Biennale de Lubumbashi VI; and 32nd Bienal de São Paulo; as well as numerous international museums and theaters. Kilomba works across various mediums such as performance, scenic reading, texts, video and installation, focusing on memory, trauma, gender and post-colonialism. Her works feature in public and private collections including Tate Modern (London, England).
Diane Lima – Lives between Salvador and São Paulo, Brazil. One of the Brazilians awarded by the Ford Foundation Global Fellowship, her projects gained notoriety for broadening the debate on artistic and curatorial practices from a decolonial perspective in the country. She holds a master’s degree in communication and semiotics from PUC-SP and is part of the curatorial committee for the new long-term exhibition in the collection of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP). Among her recent works are the co-curatorships of Frestas – 3rd Trienal de Artes do Sesc SP – O rio é uma serpente [The River is a Snake], in 2021, and Vuadora, a retrospective exhibition for the artist Paulo Nazareth at Pivô.
Hélio Menezes – Lives in São Paulo, Brazil. Anthropologist and internationalist at the Universidade de São Paulo and an affiliated scholar at the BrazilLab at Princeton University. He was curator of contemporary art at Centro Cultural São Paulo from 2019 to 2021, where he also served as curator of literature between March and October 2019, and international coordinator of the World Social Forum in Belém (2009), Dakar (2011) and Tunis (2013). Some of his most recent works are Carolina Maria de Jesus: A Brazil for Brazilians (IMS Paulista), Histórias Afro-Atlânticas (MASP and Instituto Tomie Ohtake) and dos brasis (Sesc). In 2021, he was acknowledged by ArtReview as one of the 100 most important people in the contemporary art world.
This IBA Stage is part of the 10th General Assembly public program and given the nature of this event we ask everyone interested in following the event to register on our Zoom link as the talk will not be streamed.
To find our more about Choreographies of the impossible, 35th Bienal de São Paulo follow this link.
The 10th General Assembly of IBA will be co-hosted by Fundação Bienal de São Paulo. This event and those related to it would not be possible without their support.
