Live Uncertainty, 32nd São Paulo Biennial

The title of the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, Incerteza Viva (Live Uncertainty), proposes to look at notions of uncertainty and the strategies offered by contemporary art to embrace or inhabit it. While stability is understood as a remedy against anxiety, uncertainty is generally avoided or denied. The arts, though, have always played on the unknown. Historically, art has insisted on vocabularies that allow for fiction and otherness, and it dwells on the incapacity of existing means to describe the systems we are part of. Uncertainty in art points to creation, taking into account ambiguity and contradiction. Art feeds off chance, improvisation and speculation. It leaves room for error, for doubt and even for the most profound misgivings without evading or manipulating them. Art is grounded on imagination, and only through imagination will we be able to envision other narratives for our past and new ways into the future.

Incerteza Viva recognizes uncertainties as a generative guiding system and is built on the conviction that in order to confront the big questions of our time objectively, such as global warming and its impact on our habitats, the extinction of species and the loss of biological and cultural diversity, rising economic and political instability, injustice in the distribution of the Earth’s natural resources, global migration and the frightening spread of xenophobia, it is necessary to detach uncertainty from fear. Incerteza Viva is clearly connected to notions endemic to the body and the earth, with a viral quality in organisms and ecosystems. Though it is commonly associated with the word crisis, it is not equivalent to it. Uncertainty is, above all, a psychological and affective condition linked to individual or collective decision-making processes, describing the varying levels of understanding and doubt in a given situation.

Discussing uncertainty also includes processes of unlearning and requires an understanding of the boundless nature of knowledge. Describing the unknown always implies interrogating what we take for granted as known, an openness to learn from indigenous and local knowledge systems, and valuing scientific and symbolic codes as complementary rather than exclusionary. Art promotes an active exchange between people, recognizing uncertainties as guiding generative and constructive systems. Art appropriates a transdisciplinary approach to research and education. But how can art’s numerous methods of reasoning be applied to other fields of public life?

Setting out to trace cosmological thinking, ambient and collective intelligence, and systemic and natural ecologies, Incerteza Viva is built as a garden, where themes and ideas are loosely woven into an integrated whole, structured in layers, an attempt at ecology in itself. It is not organized in chapters, but rather based on dialogues between distinct explorations by 81 artists from 33 countries. The exhibition looks to a series of historical artists, who have provided a set of strategies that are now perhaps more relevant than ever before. That said, the majority of the artistic projects has been especially commissioned for the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, not to illustrate a theoretical or thematic framework, but to unfold the creative principles of uncertainty in many different directions. Numerous artworks look directly at nature and biological, botanical or alchemical processes, which can teach us about diversification and multiplicity. Other works incorporate or examine the multitude of narratives and forms of knowledge. Others critically examine political, economic and media structures of power and representation. And again others trigger the imagination and test alternative paths forward. The 32nd Bienal de São Paulo understands itself as permeable and accessible, actively participating in the continuous construction of Ibirapuera Park as a public space, expanding its sense of community; the exhibition as an extension of the park inside the pavilion. And the garden thus becomes a model, both metaphorically and methodologically, promoting a diversity of spaces, favouring experiences and activation through the public.

Incerteza Viva is a collective process that started in early 2015 and involved teachers, students, artists, activists, educators, scientists and thinkers in São Paulo, in Brazil and beyond. But it is also a collective process about to begin. Just as art naturally joins thinking with doing, reflection with action, it is only through the audience’s encounter with the works, the many performances and the Bienal’s public and educational programs over the coming months that the real wealth of Incerteza Viva emerges. Today, it is the Bienal’s role to be a platform that actively promotes diversity, freedom and experimentation, while exercising critical thought and producing other possible realities.

The 32nd Biennial opened on September 7, 2016, curated by Jochen Volz, an art historian graduated from Ludwing-Maximilian University in Munich and Hamboldt Universität in Berlin, Germany. [ 10 ]With an audience of approximately 900,000 visitors, the largest visitor in the last decade, the curated edition of Jochen Volz sought to focus on notions of “uncertainty” in order to reflect on current living conditions and the strategies offered by contemporary art to inhabit it.. Global warming, the loss of biological and cultural diversity, growing economic and political instability, the unfair distribution of the earth’s natural resources were issues under discussion. Women and artists born after 1970 formed more than half of the selected artists. A skate park, a hollow for conversations and rituals and an organic food restaurant were among the works of the exhibition.

The official website of the Biennale contains the list of current exhibitor names, place of birth, work and housing. The event had a total of 81 participants, who dialogued with the axes proposed by the curatorship also composed by Julia Rebouças, Gabi Ngcobo, Lars Bang Larsen and Sofía Olascoaga [1]. These are the axes: ecology, cosmology, education and narrative. Based on these concepts, works were chosen to build a visual, sound, tactile and sensorial panorama related to various realities highlighted throughout the pavilion, such as the indigenous cultures approached by the collective Video in the Villages, the existence ofPANC’s (Unconventional Food Plants) through the urban garden of Carla Filipe, the sustainable art of Frans Krajcberg, the pain of the African diaspora represented by Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, among many other approaches. To conduct scheduled visits by public and private students, as well as spontaneous groups and educators, the São Paulo Biennial Foundation hired more than 80 mediators to make up the exhibition’s educational team.

São Paulo International Art Biennial
The São Paulo Biennial (former São Paulo International Art Biennial ) is an art exhibition that has been held every two years in the city of São Paulo since 1951. It is considered one of the three main events of the international art circuit, next to the Biennial. Venice and Documenta in Kassel. Largest exhibition in the southern hemisphere, the Biennial is guided by innovative issues of the contemporary scenario and brings together over 500,000 people per edition. Since its inception, 32 Biennials have been produced with the participation of over 170 countries, 16,000 artists and 10 million visitors.

The event takes place at the Pavilion Ciccillo Matarazzo ‘s Ibirapuera Park, which was built along with all his other buildings in 1954. The building is also known as the Bienal Pavilion and was designed by Oscar Niemeyer with structural design of Joaquim Cardozo as a way to celebrate the 4th Centenary of the city of São Paulo. In 1962, the São Paulo Biennial Foundation was created, an institution that created and implemented artistic, educational and social initiatives.

The first São Paulo Biennial took place in 1951 due to the efforts of businessman and patrons Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho (1892 – 1977) (known as Ciccillo Matarazzo) and his wife Yolanda Penteado. The second edition (1953) was famous for bringing to Brazil the previously unheard of in the country Guernica, by Pablo Picasso.

One of the most symbolic editions, however, was the 10th São Paulo Biennial in 1969. With the recently launched Institutional Act No. 5 (AI-5), dozens of artists refused to attend the exhibition, including Burle Marx and Hélio Oiticica, and some countries and regions refused to support the exhibition, such as the Soviet Union. At the same time, in France, about 321 artists signed the manifesto “No à Biennale” or, in French, “Non à la Biennale” at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, a way of repudiating the Brazilian dictatorship. The intense movement can be understood by the censorship of art imposed by the government during the military period.

The Biennale is the first large-scale modern art exhibition held outside European and North American cultural centers. Its origin is linked to a number of other cultural achievements in São Paulo – São Paulo Art Museum Assis Chateaubriand – Masp (1947), Brazilian Comedy Theater – TBC (1948), São Paulo Museum of Modern Art – MAM / SP (1949) and Vera Cruz Film Company (1949) – which points to the strong institutional impetus that the arts receive at the time, benefited by patronsas Ciccillo Matarazzo and Assis Chateaubriand (1892 – 1968). Conceived under the MAM / SP, the 1st Biennial is held on October 20, 1951 in the Trianon esplanade, today occupied by the Masp. The space, designed by architects Luís Saia and Eduardo Kneese de Mello, gives rise to 1,800 works from 23 countries, as well as national representation.

In the history of the biennial it is possible to identify four phases: the Age of Museums, from 1951 to 1961, the Age of Patronage, between the 1960s and 1970s, the Age of Curators, from the 16th to the 24th Edition, and the Age of International Professional Curators, its current phase..

The institution started organizing the Bienal de São Paulo exhibitions from its seventh edition, formerly an activity conceived and led by the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM- SP). With the primary mission to present and discuss contemporary art through its events, the Foundation has become one of the most influential international institutions promoting Contemporary art, and its impact in visual arts in Brazil is wholly recognized. From its first edition, in 1951, the Bienal de São Paulo has presented 67,000 artworks by 14,000 artists from 160 countries. Until its 31st edition, the biennials have attracted about 8 million visitors.