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In a world marked by monetary crises, geopolitical instability and ecological disasters, the thirty sixth Bienal de São Paulo—the second oldest artwork biennial on the planet—clings to the concept it’s too late to be pessimistic. On view via January 11, 2026, on the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion in Ibirapuera Park, it brings collectively works by greater than 120 artists underneath the title “Nem todo viandante anda estradas / Da humanidade como prática” (“Not All Travellers Stroll Roads / Of Humanity as Apply”).
Curated by Cameroonian Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, with a conceptual group that included Alya Sebti, Anna Roberta Goetz, Thiago de Paula Souza, Keyna Eleison and Henriette Gallus, the exhibition is structured in six thematic chapters impressed by a verse by Afro-Brazilian poet Conceição Evaristo. The reference is not any coincidence, given the quite a few artists who get well the ties between Brazil and the Afro-Atlantic diaspora, though the proposal extends to all members, blurring geographical and political divisions.
For this version, the curatorial group got down to abandon the logic of conventional classes such because the nation-state and as a substitute conceive the number of artists as migratory chook routes. From the red-tailed hawk crossing the Americas to the Arctic tern connecting the poles, birds function metaphors for cultural actions that overflow borders. “Like them, we feature reminiscences, languages and experiences,” Ndikung defined on the press convention, describing the methodology.
The pavilion’s façade welcomes guests with a monumental set up by Theresah Ankomah (Accra, Ghana), manufactured from braided strips of various sizes and colours. Like a neighborhood curtain, it fully covers the modernist constructing designed by Oscar Niemeyer. Inside, the curatorial determination was to construct as little as doable, privileging pure mild and Niemeyer’s unique buildings. “The migratory routes of birds freed us from pondering by way of international locations and invited us to discover surprising connections,” co-curator Anna Roberta Goetz instructed Observer.
That gesture can also be mirrored within the supplies chosen by most of the artists: plastic bottle caps, laptop keyboards, matchboxes, handkerchiefs or scrunchies. “Objects reveal commerce routes, ecologies and new types of colonialism,” Goetz emphasised. An instance is the work of Brazilian artist Moisés Patrício, a practitioner of Candomblé, who wraps liturgical objects in a whole lot of colourful hair ties. In his Brasilidades sequence, the piece denounces the symbolic erasure of Black tradition from public area and proposes reparation via ancestral data.
On the bottom ground, the tour opens with the disturbing backyard by Valuable Okoyomon (a queer artist of Nigerian origin). Solar of Consciousness. God Blow Via Me – Love Break Me (2025) is a dwelling panorama of medicinal vegetation, sugarcane, aromas, sounds and uneven paths, forcing a slower tempo and an openness to different rhythms of life. Close by, Brazilian artist Nádia Taquary presents “Ìrókó: A árvore cósmica,” devoted to the orisha Ìrókó, who embodies time and ancestry. Bronze feminine figures stand beside a sacred tree topped with a white flag, evoking the terreiros of Afro-Brazilian religions.
Wolfgang Tillmans, some of the celebrated names on this version, presents a brand new video set up weaving collectively fragments of the on a regular basis—mud clinging to a boot, folders in a cupboard, fallen leaves—with a layered soundscape of city noise, birdsong and digital beats. The work builds an structure of photos and sounds that unsettles how we eat and share the visible within the digital age.
From Zimbabwe, Moffat Takadiwa transforms post-consumer waste into sculptural textiles critiquing consumerism, racism and environmental collapse. For São Paulo, he created a monumental “textile ark” of discarded plastics and metals, enveloping viewers in a portal to a future rooted in Ubuntu, the African philosophy of redistribution, cooperation and interdependence. Totemic, microorganism-like types reclaim cast-off supplies as symbols of resistance and renewal.
Conceived as a horizontal community of occasions and geographies, the Bienal insists that the follow of humanity is indispensable in a world marked by migration and inequality. “To be human is to embrace compassion, generosity, resilience and the hospitality of the visitor home,” Ndikung stated, quoting the Persian poet Rumi.
As guests depart the Bienal, Chinese language artist Music Dong’s Borrow Mild (2025) turns into the inevitable selfie spot: a mirrored room, impressed by fairground sights, that multiplies reflections into infinity. But past the spectacle, the work gestures towards limitless human connections, reminding us that each encounter can also be an act of neighborhood. On this playful gesture, guests discover themselves woven into the community of relationships that the Bienal de São Paulo unfolds from starting to finish.
Extra in artwork gala’s, biennials and triennials
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