Associação Cultural Videobrasil

In times of exacerbated nationalism, the Biennial turns to community, collective and resistance practices

     

Always in close dialogue with the political and social context, the editions of Videobrasil have presented, over the decades, a plurality of critical views on the contemporary world, its crises, advances and setbacks. Without leaving aside the focus on transformations in form and language intrinsic to contemporary art, the festival has always had as an important aspect this look at global geopolitics, social inequalities, racism, authoritarianisms and other forms of violence. In the internal context, Videobrasil has followed, since its first edition (1983), the story of a Brazil that, after two decades of dictatorship, progressively established itself under a democratic regime, with relative solidity in its main institutions and powers. When the 21st Sesc_Videobrasil Contemporary Art Biennial* opened in October 2019, however, the idea of a country moving “forward” was severely shaken. Two years after the parliamentary coup that ousted President Dilma Rousseff, the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 brought to power a far-right leader sympathetic to the former military regime, an opponent of the most basic human rights and a denialist of the ills of the colonial past.

 

 

At a time of advancement of patriotic discourse and a jingoism hardly open to diversity—not only in Brazil, but in a world with such rulers as Donald Trump (USA) and Boris Johnson (England)—the 21st Biennial chooses as its title “Imagined Communities,” inspired by a concept proposed in 1983 by the Irish political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson to analyze the origin and spread of nationalism. Challenging the reactionary atmosphere, the edition sought to map how the production of the Global South responded to this troubled context, focusing especially on “stateless communities, original peoples, religious, mystical or communities of refugees fleeing their original territories, fictitious, utopian clandestine communities or those formed in the underground universes of sexual experiences and dissident bodies,” as explained by the curators—in a team led by Gabriel Bogossian.

With Solange Oliveira Farkas as artistic direction and Bogossian, Luisa Duarte and Miguel A. López as curators, the edition was held for the first time at Sesc 24 de Maio, in central São Paulo, in a region known for its cultural plurality, where migrants from all corners of Brazil, Latin and African immigrants, refugees, LGBTQIA+ groups and people from different social classes share the same space. The now called Biennial—after 20 editions under the name Festival—dialogued like rarely before with its close environs. With 55 artists from 28 countries—five of which invited by the curators—the edition reinforced, precisely, a defense of dialogue, exchanges and tolerance: “Amidst the threats—renewed daily—that currently hover over so many fundamental freedoms and values, it’s reassuring to be able to reiterate the praise for diversity, for transformative thinking and for the exercise of culture,” declared Solange. 

As it could not be otherwise in this very critical internal context, the curators kept their gaze on the different corners of the world, but gave prominent space to the national production, with 18 Brazilian participants. Not that all of these global realities were not in close dialogue, but, as Solange explained, “after the last Brazilian elections, we must inquire which communities can still, more than imagined or supposed, be visible and experienced on a daily basis. Preferred targets of elected officials, LGBTQIA+, black people, indigenous people, women and other minority groups deepen their community practices in response, seeking to secure rights that were so hard- (and so recently) won.

Among these minoritized groups, the space devoted to original peoples was notable in Southern Panoramas. Among Brazilians, GRIN—a video by Isael Maxakali and Roney Freitas awarded in the edition—enters the universe of the Maxakali by reviving memories of the Indigenous Rural Guard during the military dictatorship, with testimonies of the violence committed in the attempt to control original peoples. The three-channel video installation About cameras, spirits and occupations: a montage-essay triptych, in turn, presented the work of the collective Alto Amazonas Audiovisual, with problematizations surrounding the relationship between ethnologists and their “objects of study,” in this case the indigenous peoples of the Javari Valley. In addition to them, the video Guardiões da memória presented a reflection by the filmmaker and educator Alberto Guarani on the religiosity of his people, while the installation Jeguatá – caderno de viagem brought together material produced by four directors—Ana Carvalho, Ariel Kuaray Ortega, Fernando Ancil and Patrícia Para Yxapy—on their journey between Guarani villages in Brazil and Argentina.

In the words of the curators, “bearing in mind the Brazilian case, in which the image of a generic Indian was evoked over decades as a symbol of the country's origins and the identity of a mestizo nationalism, the exhibition of these works seeks to shed light on their counter-hegemonic poetics and their legitimation networks, at a time when, beyond the world of art, we are experiencing violent attacks on Indigenous rights and the integrity of their territories.” In dialogue with national cases, realities of original peoples of other countries emerged in works such as those by the North American Jim Denomie (1955–2022), of the Anishinaabe ethnicity, who showed two paintings about the violence suffered by Indigenous people in the US. The New Zealander of Maori origin Brett Graham, in turn, in the installation Monument to the property of peace, monument to the property of evil, refers to Pai Mārire, a syncretic religious movement that played an important role in the natives' resistance to Europeans. Finally, the Mexican Noe Martínez, in the video Interrupción del Sueño, draws from his research with colonial documents about the Purépecha people; while Andrea Tonacci (1944–2016)—one of the guest artists—in the video installation Struggle to be heard: Voices of indigenous activists, presents interviews and meetings with Indigenous people from several countries in the Americas.

  

 

 

Past and present 

Other productions highlighted in the exhibition, also linked to decolonial issues, forms of resistance and the defense of communal cultural identities, were those of Afro-descendant peoples—groups highly impacted by nationalism in contexts such as, for example, slavery and the partition of Africa by the European colonizers. Quite evident in the venue’s central area, three large paintings by the young Brazilian artist No Martins depicted black, imposing faces with a “rude gaze,” with the words #JáBasta! [#Enough!] at the bottom. Made in fabric, these types of banners sounded like a cry of resistance against racism and police violence in Brazil, also creating a direct dialogue with the contemporary language of social media, their hashtags and one-liners. For his work, Martins received the Sesc Contemporary Art Award.

One of the most impactful contemporary Brazilian artists, Rosana Paulino was also invited by the curators, and had her video installation Das avós commissioned by the festival. In the work, the artist mixes personal repertoire with that of other characters, always black women, to address ancestry and oblivion in a country marked by slavery. The dancer and choreographer Luiz de Abreu, winner of the main prize of the 18th festival (2013) with the performance O samba do crioulo doido, also raised issues regarding race and gender in a retrospective with six of his pieces created between 1995 and 2009, which have the black body as central element. Another work commissioned by the event was What Is left of the Sugar Cubes?, by Thierry Oussou, from Benin, a video based on his months-long stay in Brazil. Gathering testimonies from professionals linked to the Museu Memorial Cemitério dos Pretos Novos and the Museu Nacional, both in Rio, the artist takes sugar as a metaphor for history, proposing a reflection on memory, heritage kept and lost—sometimes intentionally. 

Also from the African continent, Mouhau Modisakeng presented Ga bose gangwe, an impactful video that refers to South Africa's transition from a regime of segregation (the apartheid) to democracy. A record in black and white of an action in which black men perform dressed in white clothes, the work raises issues about racialization from a poetic action with a strong aesthetic appeal. Modisakeng also presented one of the four performances that marked the 21st Biennial, The Last Harvest, a work based on photos taken by Marc Ferrez in 1882 to address slavery around the world. Still within the exhibition, with a more historical character, a collection of African jewelry selected from the collection of the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo (MAE-USP) presented a series of objects of prestige, protection or power of three peoples from West Africa that has left their mark on Brazilian culture: Yoruba from Nigeria, Ashanti from Ghana, and the Fon culture from present-day Benin. 

Relating to groups that emerged in recent decades, whether out of the need for self-preservation and the fight for rights, or due to cultural identifications, LGBTQIA+ groups also gained prominence in the exhibition. The #VoteLGBT collective, for instance, presented Voçoroca, a set of actions, classes and interventions that spread throughout Sesc 24 de Maio—and even through Largo do Arouche, in central São Paulo. Among them were open performative actions, free legal advice for trans people and travestis and the production and distribution of lambe-lambes [wheatpaste posters] with political messages. Also part of the exhibition was a vast selection of covers from the Snob newspaper (1963–1969), a pioneering, amateur publication that printed news and debates about gay sociability networks, mainly in Rio de Janeiro. Regarding both the Snob collection and the African jewels, both of a historical nature, the curators argued that their presence in the exhibition reinforced “the museal dimension of a biennial.” For them: “In times in which our museums burn, the presence of collections stored in archives and university museums gives new evidence of the importance of these institutions for the cultural life of the country.”

Reflecting on the various collectivities and communities present in the exhibition, Solange pointed out the proposal to exhibit them not as isolated, thematic groups, classifiable into “closed types,” but respecting their pluralities and include them in the biennial through possible dialogues and conversations. In their words: “The idea was, for example, to guarantee the presence of artists who are only included in thematic contemporary art group shows, as if they belonged, in a way, to a separate species. Sometimes disguised as deference, this type of erasure affects, for instance, artists from indigenous ethnicities and/or original peoples.”

 

 

   

Macro and micropolitics

Keeping up with Videobrasil's traditional focus on production from the Middle East—especially after the 14th edition, in 2003—the 21st biennial featured a large number of artists from the region. The impact of their works was such that three of them were awarded prizes. In the video installation I went away and forgot you. A while ago I remembered. I remembered I'd forgotten you. I was dreaming, the Saudi Dana Awartani—who was granted a residency at the Sacatar Institute (Brazil)—created a fluid dialogue between a video, in which the artist is seen sweeping a floor of traditional Arabic tiles, and a similar space built in the exhibition, right in front of the screen. The entire environment and the performative gesture of the video touch on questions about ephemerality and eternity, the erasure of traces of Islamic culture and the westernization, which from time to time move onto the Middle East. 

A big impact was also caused by Schmitt, you and me, by the Lebanese Omar Mismar—who was granted the MMCA Residency Changdong (South Korea)—a long-term video that takes place inside a weapons store in Maine (USA). The relationship of apparent friendship created between the artist and the store owner, who together read a historical text by Carl Schmitt (a German scholar linked to Nazism), puts us facing a strange situation that addresses violence, politics and, at the same time, the complexity of human relationships. Finally, the German-based Turkish artist Aykan Safoğlu won an honorable mention for Off-White Tulips, a video in which he creates a kind of imaginary conversation with the famous writer James Baldwin, a black gay man who lived in Istanbul in the 1960s and 1970s. Safoğlu, also a homosexual, brings his personal journey closer to that of the North American author, dealing with prejudice, nationalism, alterity and memory.

More directly linked to social and labor communities or collectivities, due attention was given to works such as Laboratorio de invención social o posibles Formas de Construcción Colectiva, by the Argentinian Gabriela Golder, which won the State of the Art Award - Electrica Cinema & Vídeo. Based on the experience of workers who occupied bankrupt factories in the 2000s and established self-management systems, the artist proposes a discussion about work in a neoliberal world and the possibilities of collective construction. In a very different context, but also focused on popular resistance struggles, the Movimento de Luta nos Bairros, Vilas e Favelas, of socialist inspiration and active throughout Brazil in defense of more democratic cities, presented the video installation Conte isso àqueles que dizem que fomos derrotados (which won the Sesc Contemporary Art Award). With more silences than speeches, the work presents a detailed look at some notable moments of the occupations carried out by the group. 

Coming from the other corner of the globe, the Vietnamese Thanh Hoang presented Nikki's here, a kind of chronicle about the clash of cultures in the globalized world. Winner of the Ostrovsky Family Fund (O.F.F.) Award, the video is a mix of documentary and fiction that follows the life of a Vietnamese tantric masseuse in New York and her complex relationships with work and her North American husband. Finally, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nelson Makengo won the Sharjah Art Foundation Residency Award for E'ville (ElisabethVille), a poetic and melancholic video that mixes images of ruins, archive photos and narration to deal with a country that, even after liberation from Belgian colonialism, still has a hopeless future. 

In addition to the cash and residency prizes—defined by the jury made up of Alexia Tala (Chile), Gabi Ngcobo (South Africa), Rosangela Rennó (Brazil), Reem Fadda (Kuwait) and Marta Mestre (Portugal)—an original trophy produced by the artist Alexandre da Cunha was granted to all the winners. The piece, titled Joia, reproduces a life-size coconut in golden metal, cut in the same way fruit sellers do, and with a straw in it. In the work, the artist invokes “the legacy of invention and precariousness of post-colonial cultures,” especially in places in the Global South such as Brazil, and Caribbean and Asian countries.

Among the performances presented in the edition, the Mexican Teresa Margolles performed Tela Bordada, a collective action that resulted in a fabric and a video embedded into the exhibition. In the performance, commissioned by the Biennial, women embroiderers narrated their life stories while working with a type of cloth used in morgues, eventually producing a fabric full of meanings about personal memory, violence and, simultaneously, possibilities of solidarity and integration. The 21st Biennial also featured the performances No le digas a mi mano derecha lo que hace la izquierda, by the Costa Rican Marton Robinson Palmer, and the musical action Digital soul, by the French Emo de Medeiros.

 

 

 

Violence and subtleties 

The geopolitical choices and the various difficult themes throughout the exhibition were highlighted in the articles published by the press at the time: “Biennial brings 'margins' and 'gaps' to the center of the discussion,” said the headline of the newspaper Estado de S.Paulo; and “Ghosts of colonization and violence haunt the Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil,” read the Folha de S.Paulo article. The text read: “When asked about the somber tone of this edition of the exhibition, the founder of Videobrasil, Solange Farkas, responds that 'reality is heavy. (...) And these works are not without the strength of denunciation’.” In the magazine arte!brasileiros, in turn, the critic Maria Hirszman sounded more thoughtful: “'Imagined Communities,' a motto inspired by the work of Benedict Anderson, becomes a powerful, but not imposing, guide, which allowed to bring together a wide range of explorations whose main common characteristic is perhaps the delicate way in which they address often dramatic issues.” For her, “destruction, threat of extermination, distorted worldview due to racial, economic or social prejudices are aspects largely covered (...) and, however, a certain subtlety predominates in the exhibition, a bet on the transformative power of art, which doesn’t need to shout to be heard.” 

Continuing Videobrasil's practice of activating exhibitions and deepening the topics covered in them through Public Programs, the 21st Biennial had a broad set of activities, including seminars, meetings with artists and mediated tours. Themes linked to the feminist and LGBTQIA+ struggle, and the possibilities and limitations of engaged art were highlighted in the speeches of the researcher and anthropologist Juliana Borges, the writer and activist Amara Moira and the North American curator Lucy R. Lippard. Global geopolitics, the advances and dilemmas of the virtual universe and the use of time today permeated the speeches of the sociologist Laymert Garcia dos Santos and writer and curator Guilherme Wisnik, while cultural practices and counter-hegemonic pedagogies in the neoliberal world permeated the speeches of professor Marisa Flórido Cesar, curator Pablo Lafuente, filmmaker Kamikia Kisêdjê and critic Mario A. Caro, who also analyzed the insertion of indigenous art in North American institutions.

The non-elaboration of the violence of the Brazilian past—whether in the colonial or the military dictatorship period—was the topic of the roundtable with artist Rosana Paulino and psychoanalyst Maria Rita Kehl, while symbolic production in social movements was debated by anthropologist Mariana Cavalcanti, the designer and filmmaker Carla Caffé and the leader of Ocupação 9 de Julho, Carmen Silva Ferreira. The meetings also included philosophers Peter Pál Pelbart and Vladimir Safatle, curators Lisete Lagnado and Clarissa Diniz and psychoanalyst Suely Rolnik, among others. This series of Public Programs resulted in the third publication of the “Leituras” [Readings] series, an anthology of the speakers' speeches edited by Luisa Duarte. 
 
The 21st Biennial was also the last with the direct participation of the sociologist and philosopher Danilo Santos de Miranda, regional director of Sesc SP for around 40 years, who would pass away in 2023, before the following edition of the event was held. His words in the presentation text seem to condense some of the propositions launched at the Biennial: “The idea of the nation-state guides the way in which a country is governed. Through it, the population is led to believe it belongs to a cohesive community, which thus recognizes itself as sharing the same language, culture and history—usually to the detriment of minority traditions.” He continued: “The field of art is favorable to the imagination of other ways of constituting communities, based on identifications and processes that are decidedly alternative to those of the homeland—taking into account the injustices and debts that national States carry with them, especially concerning the ‘involuntaries of the motherland,' as expressed by the anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. It is from this delicate historical context that the curatorial focus of the 21st Biennial originates.” 

Today, after the fact, it is remarkable to think that the many visions presented by the collectivities and communities present there—such as the indigenous ones, notably—proved to be even more urgent and necessary in a world that, exactly one month after the end of the 21st Biennial, was plunged into the catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic, the result, at least in part, of the predatory ways of life imposed by the capitalist world and its national states.

 

By Marcos Grinspum Ferraz

*the title used to name the main exhibition organized by Videobrasil, now called Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, has undergone adjustments over the years. The changes were based on the organizers' perception of the features of each edition, especially in regards to its format; duration; frequency; partnerships with other companies and institutions; and the expansion of the artistic languages showcased. The main adjustments to the titles of the exhibitions were: inserting the name of the partner company Fotoptica between the 2nd (1984) and 8th (1990) editions; including the word “international” between the 8th and 17th (2011) editions, from the moment the event starts to receive foreign artists and works intensively; using the term “electronic art” between the 10th (1994) and 16th (2007) editions, when the organizers realize that referring only to video did not account for all the works presented; including the name of Sesc, the show's main partner in the last three decades, from the 16th edition onwards; and replacing “electronic art” with “contemporary art” between the 17th and 21st (2019) editions, as the focus expands to varied artistic languages. The most recent change took place in 2019, in the 21st edition, when the name “festival” was replaced with “biennial,” a term more appropriate to an event that was already being held biannually and with an exhibition duration of months, not weeks.

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Images:
Everton Ballardin and Pedro N. Prata / Videobrasil Historical Collection 
Videobrasil Historical Collection
 
1. Visual identity of the 21st Videobrasil, by Daniel Trench and Celso Longo

Gallery 1
1. Overview of the exhibition.
2. Artists participating in the Biennial.
3. Luisa Duarte, Gabriel Bogossian, Solange Oliveira Farkas and Miguel A. López.
4. Video at the Sesc 24 de Maio window.
5. Performance “No le digas a mi mano derecha lo que hace la izquierda,” by Marton Robinson Palmer
6. The three-channel video installation “About cameras, spirits and occupations: a montage-essay triptych,” by Alto Amazonas Audiovisual.
7. “Das avós,” by Rosana Paulino.
8. “Das avós,” by Rosana Paulino.
9. Overview of the exhibition.
10 Overview of the exhibition.

Gallery 2
1. "I went away and forgot you. A while ago I remembered. I remembered I’d forgotten you. I was dreaming.", by Dana Awartani.
2. "Schmitt, you and me", by Omar Mismar.
3. "E'ville (ElisabethVille)", by Nelson Makengo.
4. "Laboratorio de invención social o posibles formas de construcción colectiva", by Gabriela Golder.
5. "Nikki's Here", by Thanh Hoang.
6. "#Jábasta", by No Martins.
7. "Conte isso àqueles que dizem que fomos derrotados", by Movimento de luta nos bairros, vilas e favelas.
8. "GRIN", by Isael Maxakali and Roney Freitas.
9. "Off-White Tulips", by Aykan Safoğlu
.

Gallery 3
1. Artists, curators and jury at the Biennial’s awards ceremony.
2. The members of the Biennial jury.
3. Original trophy produced by Alexandre da Cunha.
4. MAE-USP’s African jewelry collection.
5. Collection of covers from the newspaper Snob.
6. “Binibining promised land,” by Köken Ergun.
7. “Tela bordada,” performance by Teresa Margolles.
8. Furniture from the work “Voçoroca,” by the #VoteLGBT collective.
9. “Looking for Jesus,” by Jonathas de Andrade.
10. “Dando bandeira,” by Mônica Nador.