The thirty sixth Bienal de São Paulo opens with the putting site-specific set up Solar of Consciousness. God Blow Via Me – Love Break Me (2025) by the Nigerian-American artist Valuable Okoyomon, comprising a spiralling path of moss-covered earth, waterfalls and different natural and sculptural parts that evoke the biome of the Cerrado, a area of Brazil that has been broadly deforested. Okoyomon’s time within the Minas Gerais state and as an artist-in-resident on the newly launched Casa Onze in São Paulo extensively knowledgeable the work. It develops upon the artist’s presentation on the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, making connections between nature and sociopolitics.
The work units the tone for the biennial. Like Okoyomon, many collaborating artists are exhibiting work in Brazil for the primary time and investigating Brazilian themes. The work is embedded with nuanced poetics, nodding in its title to Édouard Glissant, one of many writers who is claimed to have impressed a lot of the considering behind the biennial. The piece additionally continues a beforehand celebrated undertaking however now with a Brazilian twist.
In the meantime, the organising group is totally worldwide; the Cameroonian chief curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung has been assisted by curators from Morocco (Alya Sebti), Switzerland (Anna Roberta Goetz) and Brazil (Thiago de Paula Souza and Keyna Eleison) alongside the German communications advisor Henriette Gallus.
The theme
To start to know the biennial it’s useful to attempt to unpick its title: Not All Travellers Stroll Roads— Of Humanity as Apply. It partly references a poem by the Afro-Brazilian author Conceição Evaristo. In her poem, the phrase viandante—which is translated right here as “traveller”—is nearer in which means to a pilgrim or an existentialist. The second a part of the title references what the curators name “practising humanity as a verb”, an idea that has many unfastened interpretations within the biennial, the place lofty phrases like “conjugating humanity” are used all through.
In the course of the opening weekend, an area gallerist remarked: “I didn’t actually perceive the theme. Did you?” And it does look like the biennial typically will get misplaced in its lyricism, possibly as a result of the theme of “humanity as observe” is so all-encompassing that one might make an argument for the inclusion of just about any murals. A lot of the items on present, greater than half of which had been commissioned for the exhibition, are visually compelling and have good backstories, however some simply don’t really feel at dwelling within the biennial, or are so on-the-nose that they appear barely flat.
Power and weak point
For instance, probably the most anticipated parts was a career-spanning presentation by the British artist Frank Bowling. Greater than 20 work—the second-largest artist presence within the biennial, behind the Brazilian artist Gervane de Paula—are dispersed all through the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, together with commissioned works like Agnes and September (each 2025), which take the define of Brazil as their topic. The works proceed Bowling’s longtime color subject work that concentrate on borders and imperialism. However his different work fade into the background of the present, begging the query of whether or not this important presentation might have been extra impactful elsewhere.
The columns of the Oscar Niemeyer-designed pavilion are splashed with prolonged and uninviting texts that designate—in a considerably “artwork communicate” tone—the six “chapters” of the exhibition, which have lengthy and nebulous titles: Frequencies of Arrivals and Belongings; Grammars of Insurgencies; On Spatial Rhythms and Narrations; Flows of Care and Plural Cosmologies; Cadences of Transformation; and The Intractable Fantastic thing about the World. Their Portuguese translations aren’t a lot clearer.
High quality, not amount
This version of the biennial options 125 artists, together with 97 worldwide artists and 28 Brazilian artists. When questioned in regards to the roster, Ndikung mentioned the curators had been “not targeted on numbers” however moderately “artists, Brazilian or in any other case, who carry depth and sociopolitical engagement”. He added that having a predominantly overseas curatorial group could have its benefits: “Generally, if you end up too near one thing, you can’t see it clearly. Somebody from far-off could reveal it in another way.”
The earlier version in 2023—organised by the Brazilian curators Diane Lima and Hélio Menezes, the Portuguese artist Grada Kilomba and the Spanish historian Manuel Borja-Villel—was primarily centred on Brazil, with themes just like the Afro-Brazilian faith Candomblé, the plight of Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian individuals, and the army dictatorship. It was a stronger biennial though critiques had been additionally combined; some thought it was too Brazilian, whereas foreigners who had no familiarity with Brazil struggled to observe. But when the final biennial felt inaccessible to the unprimed viewer, this biennial feels alienating to everybody.
One of the best works look to nature as a metaphor. Marlene Almeida’s Terra Viva (Dwelling Earth) (2025)—an set up comprised of suspended textiles dyed with native vegetation and minerals—powerfully conjures the wonder and abundance of the Brazilian panorama. Antonio Társis’s Orchestra Disaster: Act I (2025) consists of tapestries comprised of digital waste and different supplies, referencing his upbringing in a favela and the polluting results of human consumption. And Rebeca Carapiá’s copper and iron sculptures Como criar raízes aéreas (Learn how to Create Aerial Roots) (2025) evoke the paxiúba, also referred to as the strolling palm, which strikes towards daylight, symbolising resilience towards inequality.
Efficiency energy
One other energy of the biennial is its efficiency programme, held inside and outdoors of the pavilion in collaboration with 13 Brazilian and 15 overseas cultural establishments, together with the Tanoto Artwork Basis from Singapore and the Heart for Artwork, Analysis and Alliances from New York.
As a part of the programme, the Casa do Povo in São Paulo hosted probably the most memorable moments of the opening weekend, the efficiency Batucada (2014-ongoing) by the Brazilian choreographer Marcelo Evelin. Masked performers started slowly drumming Brazilian beats on issues like pots and oil cans and softly nudging the viewers as they circled across the room, with their drumming and physicality changing into step by step extra intense because the crescendo constructed and the performers disrobed. The room was musky with sweat when the hour-long work ended. Because the viewers adopted the performers onto the road they had been compelled to maneuver round their our bodies to exit.
This efficiency significantly stood out, possibly as a result of it was punctuated by the form of visceral feeling that the biennial touted however appeared to lack at instances. It was additionally uniquely Brazilian, utilizing the vitality of percussive Afro-Brazilian drumming to talk to sociopolitical tensions and energy struggles with out being didactic. It appeared to be nearly universally understood and felt by the viewers. Some had coated their ears in the course of the efficiency, prompting one artist to scoff: “You didn’t come to Brazil to see one other Documenta.”
• Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, São Paulo, till 11 January. Curator: Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. Tickets: free. The works: ★★★★. The present ★★★
What the opposite critics mentioned
In The Guardian, Oliver Basciano provides the present three stars: “meditation and non secular connection could also be OK in small doses, however after three flooring and 30,000 sq. m of darkened rooms [and] a normal encouragement to be moved, mesmerised and in contact with my non secular facet … I really feel fairly on edge”.
In Artwork Assessment, Mateus Nunes says the exhibition design “emerges as [the] most contentious level, a multilayered concern” and he “anticipated this Bienal to push more durable towards the Modernist austerity of Niemeyer’s white edifice”.
