Now in its seventh edition, the traveling exhibitions program of the Bienal de São Paulo will take selections from the main show to cities in Brazil and abroad in the year following its staging. In 2024, the first stop will be the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio), where curators Diane Lima, Grada Kilomba, Hélio Menezes, and Manuel Borja-Villel have designed a special segment of the show adapted to the characteristics and context of the city.

Of the 121 artists at the Bienal Pavilion in São Paulo, 20 will be in Rio de Janeiro. According to the curators, the selection offers a panorama of what was seen in São Paulo: “It’s a cross-section of the exhibition that brings together important aspects of the 35th Bienal de São Paulo. It’s a challenging but equally interesting exercise to make a selection from such a complex and monumental exhibition, even more so in the context of Rio de Janeiro, a city that has so many intersections with contemporary urgencies and beauties that the choreographies of the impossible bring with them.”

The following artists are taking part in the exhibition: Citra Sasmita, Edgar Calel, Emanoel Araujo, Katherine Dunham, Leilah Weinraub, Luiz de Abreu, M’barek Bouhchichi, Malinche, Marilyn Boror Bor, Maya Deren, Min Tanaka and François Pain, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Quilombo Cafundó, Rosana Paulino, Santu Mofokeng, Simone Leigh & Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, The Living and Dead Ensemble, Torkwase Dyson, Xica Manicongo, and Zumví Arquivo Afro Fotográfico.

Andrea Pinheiro, president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, expresses her enthusiasm for this new chapter, given that the exhibition’s first traveling exhibition is also her first as president: “Starting in the city of Rio is a joy and a challenge. In a metropolis where the cultural scene is so rich and unique, taking this show that addresses our main contemporary urgencies, and which has communicated so directly with the public, represents a great achievement for the Fundação Bienal.”

“In Rio, the MAM is the natural landing place for an edition of the Bienal that embraces and reflects the urgencies of the world. For us, it is a pleasure and an honor to host the ‘choreographies of the impossible’,” says Paulo Vieira, the museum’s executive director.

For Pablo Lafuente, artistic director of MAM Rio, the exhibition reactivates the collaboration that the two institutions have developed since the 1950s, when the artists who won prizes at the Bienal de São Paulo would then be exhibited at the museum in Rio de Janeiro. “And, as has happened historically, by moving the works it is possible not only to make them available to new audiences, but also to test other arguments from the point of view of curatorship and mediation.”

35th Bienal de São Paulo – choreographies of the impossible
Traveling Exhibitions Program
MAM Rio Traveling Exhibition
Curators: Diane Lima, Grada Kilomba, Hélio Menezes, and Manuel Borja-Villel
Jan 27 – Apr 7 2024
Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, 10 am – 6 pm
Sun, 11 am – 6 pm
Holidays (except Sundays), 10 am – 6 pm
Exclusive visiting hours for people with intellectual disabilities, people with autism, or those with some kind of hypersensitivity to visual or sound stimuli: Sun, 10 am – 11 am
Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro – MAM Rio
Av. Infante Dom Henrique, 85
Parque do Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro
https://mam.rio/
entry by voluntary contribution