Associação Cultural Videobrasil

 

A new chapter for Videobrasil
by Solange Farkas

I want to share with you a new moment for Associação Cultural Videobrasil. Starting in 2026, we will begin a new phase, with an ongoing program of actions that expand our commitment to art from the Global South. This decision aligns with an important change in our shared trajectory: after over four decades, the Videobrasil Biennial has completed its cycle and will no longer be held as a periodic event.

I created Videobrasil in 1983, in the waning years of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship, as a festival focused on the then emerging video production in the country. From the outset, there was a desire to build a platform for the fostering, disseminating and critically reflecting on art produced in the territories of the Global South—a gesture that I have kept cultivating for over four decades.
 
Over time, the event transformed into a Biennial, expanding its curatorial scope and embracing multiple languages and supports. The creation of the Associação Cultural Videobrasil and the partnership with Sesc SP, in the early 1990s, allowed me to deepen this work and create an international network of artists, curators and institutions with whom I share values, practices and commitments. Throughout its history, the Biennial has also consolidated itself as one of the leading spaces in terms of visibility and articulation for Latin American artistic production in its complexity and power and as a territory of resistance, invention and symbolic production that dialogues with multiple geographies of the South.

One of the biggest differences of our biennial has always been the ongoing relationship we establish with artists: in addition to exhibiting works, we promote residencies, commissions and actions that stimulate lasting processes and exchanges. This dimension of promotion is an essential part of the project, as is the desire to activate the collection gathered over the years as a fertile ground for new actions.
 
Today, as I have done at other turns of decades, I am delving into a process of listening and reviewing. The international biennial scene has diversified intensely, and even events historically marked by a Eurocentric perspective have begun to incorporate, in recent editions, themes and artists from the Global South. This leads me to reflect on what specific role Videobrasil still has to play in this changing scenario. 

We understand that our greatest commitment is to create permanent structures for visibility, circulation, and preservation, far beyond the model of a periodic event. For this reason, we have decided to end the Biennial cycle and focus our energy on strengthening and expanding the ongoing activities of Associação Cultural Videobrasil.

But it’s not about closing a cycle—it’s about opening it. Questioning formats does not imply relinquishing principles: on the contrary, it is precisely to preserve what moves us—the connection with artists, active listening, networked thought and experimentation as a practice—that I continue to think about how to reinvent pathways.

Our new project was approved under the Culture Incentive Law, as a biannual plan (2026–2027). We will chart these new paths with a permanent program, with artistic residencies, temporary exhibitions, publications, updates and expansions to the collection's access interfaces, and a renewed digital platform. All of this will continue to have the art from the Global South as its central axis—our greatest commitment from the outset.

We are certain that we will stick together, reinventing ways of acting and reaffirming the strength of the arts from the Global South. Stand by for our new program!

With affection and gratitude,
Solange Oliveira Farkas
Artistic director