26 São Paulo Biennale: ‘Image Smugglers in a Free Territory’ or the failure of de-territorializing art?

Gabriela Salgado, Curator of UECLAA (University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art)

Since its first edition in 1951, at the peak of Brazil’s insertion in the discourse of the modern nation, the vision of Ciccillo Matarazzo propelled the São Paulo Biennale as a showcase for the art of the time in an unprecedented effort that would equal Venice in prestige and excellence. For over 50 years, the Biennale has been a beacon for those searching an intelligent approach to presenting contemporary art and a highly respected event in the international scene. A well balanced combination of the best and the established with the yet to be discovered was one of its virtues, coupled with intelligent curatorial discourses that did not seek to replicate the theories born from the European tradition but drew inspiration from homegrown thinkers such as Oswald de Andrade, whose Manifesto Antropofagico of 1928 inspired the celebrated 1998 edition curated by Paulo Herkenhoff.

With this historical background, the last two Biennales curated by Alfons Hug can be considered a major failure, as they have neither delivered a message of intellectual relevance nor presented the selected artworks - some of them of high quality - in a proper context.

On the one hand, the concept of ‘Free Territory’ seems highly problematic. According to Hug, if art has to remain aside from the political - which seems to be his main agenda- the questions of the occupation of large amounts of territories by neo-imperial powers in the recent years not only do not matter but they have to be contra rested by an oppositional discourse: aesthetics and only aesthetics should matter to art. The other problem that arises, then, is his understanding of aesthetics.

One of the points in the curators’ press release is that of the pervasive effects caused by the avalanche of images we are exposed to through the mass media. Now, if the ground floor of his exhibition is not about the grandiloquent gestures and hyper spectacularity proper of the media, it is difficult to imagine any other motivation behind the selection of works. The piece by Danish artist Lars Mathiesen, highly featured in the cover of the main local newspapers, constitutes a good example. The work consists merely of a VW beetle hanging from the ceiling. Guests are invited to climb in order to undergo an idiotic turn produced by the mechanical release of the tightened rope from which the car is suspended. If the curatorial discourse is against the banality of images produced by the ‘real world’ Í would like to see something more banal in the world of art. Obviously, for the media this work meant a great photo opportunity. This promotion coupled with the decision to provide a free entry to the public as a celebration of the 450th anniversary of São Paulo, provides a good reason to visit an exhibition that promises to offer the excitements of a fun fair.

In the same floor, a monumental sculpture attracts our attention: a life size elephant attacked by a tiger symbolises imperial relations between England and China. The work, utterly alienated from its ultimate meaning, is by excellent artist Huang Yong Ping, but in this context, it sadly serves to reflect the intention of the exhibition: the cult of aesthetics as the use of spectacular tricks.

The inclusion of a large amount of dubious quality paintings is another element that seemed to underline the curator’s romantisation of the figure of the artist as a redemptor of social malaise.

The curatorial statement seems more like a fanatical manifesto in defence of painting (yes, painting again) and a shallow criticism of the politization of contemporary art. Hug coins the terms ‘politikitsch’ and ‘sociokitsch’ to undermine the tendency of artists to produce a socio-political discourse through their works in detriment of pure, abstract languages. One could agree that curatorial approaches might vary and that the view which states that contemporary production reflects too many documentary-type references to the real world is legitimate. The problem with Mr Hug’s argument is that he places the emphasis on aesthetics and, in turn, within this field, he places painting as the ultimate solution to liberate art from its chains. Not only the medium-based justification is weak, but also in this Biennale, did not help to create a solid criterion for the selection of paintings. The inclusion of such bland samples as a considerable number of works by internationally celebrated Beatriz Milhazes in one of the special rooms is an example.One of the points in the curatoral brief was that of counter balancing the tendency of curators to instrumentalise art in benefit of socio-political commentary, but it seems like this exhibition’s success could only be located in the instrumentalisation of painting as a medium to preserve the ‘aura’ of truth.

If the concept of ‘Free territory’ imposed a ‘border free’ distribution of national representations in the space, alongside the invited international and the selected Brazilian artists, it also produced a complex hanging method that in some cases acted against the works themselves. Sound pieces were installed next to each other, producing a confusing sound pollution that did not help their good appreciation, such in the case of the poetic work by Cuban artist Geysell Capetillo placed next to Indonesian artist Heri Dono’s witty sound machines.

A propos Cuba, a point in case of how curatorial consistency is missing, is shown in the country’s participation, marked by the presence of Carlos Garaicoa, Esterio Segura, and René Francisco all of them present in the 2003 Havana Biennale with exactly the same works. If the mark of curatorial input in a Biennale is related to presenting art works in a specific context why were these pieces re contextualised in São Paulo without further commentary?

Africa speaks and the archive ‘fever’ of Paulo Bruscky

The space devoted to African photography curated by Simon Njami was an island within the exhibition. In this truly free territory, where the regulations governing the mother ship of the Biennale as a whole did not seem to rule, Njami achieved an interesting summary of African self representation through the photographs of some of the most interesting photographers of the continent from the 1940’s to the present. From historical studio portraits by Senegalese Mama Casset to the images of African sitters in their London homes by Eileen Perrier, we see them proudly overcoming their traditionally allocated status as objects of the gaze to become subjects and image makers.

This project, as well as the reconstruction of the atelier Bruscky in the special room of the second floor, is probably the only area of the exhibition that can be rescued.

Recife-based artist Paulo Bruscky was commissioned to reconstruct his studio to the minimum detail in the Biennale pavilion, allowing for the audience’s circulation among the different rooms and the viewing, across a physical barrier, of his personal belongings, among them a neatly organised archive of international art production including his correspondence with members of the Fluxus collective.

This inclusion seems to be a contradiction in the overall discourse, but one that one has to welcome, despite the fact that the curator describes the work as a symbol for the crisis of painting. This work intervenes in the construction of emblems of authority, and brings to light the functioning of the archive as an ordering of the symbolic, described by Derrida as the maximum control over memory. As what else, if not the archive, is the manifestation of political power?

November 2004