The 36th Bienal de São Paulo opens to the public on September 6, 2025, at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, after a year and a half of curatorial engagements and encounters in different parts of the world. The public program began in November 2024 with the Invocations convened in four locations: Marrakech, Guadeloupe, Zanzibar, and Tokyo. Each stop brought together artists, poets, musicians, and activists in performances, debates, rituals and presentations, discussing and enacting the spectrum of humanity through themes such as belonging, memory, togetherness, emancipation, interdependence, care, technology and transitions. These experiences served as an “initial ritual” that now flows into the exhibition in São Paulo, carrying stories and languages, tastes and sounds, aesthetics and rhythms that have crossed oceans and borders.
With a concept proposed by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, alongside co-curators Alya Sebti, Anna Roberta Goetz, and Thiago de Paula Souza, co-curator at large Keyna Eleison, and strategy and communications advisor Henriette Gallus, this edition is inspired by the poem “Da calma e do silêncio” [Of Calm and Silence] by poet Conceição Evaristo, and has active listening, encounter, negotiations, and respect as foundations of humanity as a practice. The metaphor of the estuary —a meeting place between different currents, site of manifestation and coexistence of different beings, space of exuberance— permeates an exhibition divided into six chapters, conceived as fractals and connected by constant flows and dialogues.
Chapter 1 – Frequencies of Landings and Belongings draws us to soil, to the potentials of land and the vibrations that sustain life. “Human” is etymologically related to the word “humus,” which is soil. Belonging is evoked here through relation to the earth, to communities, to the subtle pulse of existence. Works made with stones, roots, and natural pigments reflect on the relationship between body, soil, and memory. The idea of belonging appears as an active practice of listening and mutual recognition, involving not only other humans, but also rivers, plants, and animals.
Chapter 2 – Grammars of Defiances brings together works that address different forms of resistance to dehumanization. Artists explore colonial archives, retrieve erased narratives, and propose new languages of struggle. There are videos and installations that address the impact of extractivism, sculptures that reconstruct silenced histories, and sound works that give voice to songs of resistance.
Chapter 3 – Of Spatial Rhythms and Narrations investigates the marks left by displacement, migration, and urban transformation. Maps, photographs, and films record everything from forced migration routes to subtle changes in city architecture. Sculptures and installations reconfigure spaces of passage, while sound and light works recreate the atmospheres of places in constant flux.
Chapter 4 – Currents of Nurturing and Plural Cosmologies presents works that break with colonial and patriarchal models of care, offering other ways of relating to the world. Installations combine elements such as herbs, water, and ritual objects; performances and collective gatherings address Indigenous, African, and Asian healing practices and mythologies, highlighting the interdependence between ecosystems and cultures.
In Chapter 5 – Cadences of Transformations, change is seen as a permanent condition. Kinetic works, works in constant alteration, and works that reinterpret cultural traditions explore transformation as creative power. Some works change their form or content over the four months of the exhibition, inviting the public to follow living processes.
Chapter 6 – The Intractable Beauty of the World concludes the journey by celebrating beauty as an act of resistance. Paintings made with earth pigments, photographs of fragmented landscapes, and sculptures made from reused materials show that beauty can also be found in the unfinished, in that which resists and survives.
A total of 120 positions occupy the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, while another five are part of the Tributaries program, held at Casa do Povo and curated by Benjamin Seroussi and Daniel Blanga Gubbay. Developed in partnership with Cinémathèque Afrique, the Stream of Images / Imaginaries screening program, also part of Tributaries, is scheduled to take place across two countries. In addition to the Pavilion auditorium, the sessions will be presented at La Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille as part of the Brazil-France Season.
The public program, entitled Conjugations, will include debates, performances, and meetings, most of them held in partnership with institutions from different continents, such as 32º East (Kampala); Africa Design School (Cotonou); Afrotonizar (Salvador); Ajabu ajabu (Dar es Salaam); blaxTARLINES (Kumasi); Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA) (New York); Central Bank Museum (Port of Spain); Festa Literária das Periferias – FLUP (Rio de Janeiro); Fondation H (Antananarivo); Jatiwangi Art Factory (Jatiwangi); Kunsthochschule Weißensee (Berlin); Más Arte Más Acción (Chocó); Metro54 (Amsterdam); SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin); Tanoto Art Foundation (Singapore).
Another highlight of this edition is the Apparitions project, an unprecedented initiative in the history of the Bienal de São Paulo, developed in partnership with the WAVA platform. Using augmented reality technology, fragments, extensions, and echoes of the works in the Bienal de São Paulo manifest themselves in Ibirapuera Park and specific locations around the world, chosen by the artists themselves – such as the banks of the Congo River, the border between Mexico and the United States, urban parks in São Paulo or cities in Africa and Asia. Through the app, visitors can access the works only at the designated locations, creating a situated and globally accessible sensory experience.
The publication program for this edition is one of the most ambitious in the event’s history, with four educational publications – each dedicated to an Invocation – co-produced with The Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA). The publications will be distributed internationally for the first time, with free distribution in Brazil, focusing on teachers and educators. The editorial program also includes the exhibition catalog and a reader, a collection of essays and poems that engage with the concepts mobilized by the show. All publications are available in Portuguese and English.
Beyond the numbers and grandeur of this edition, the 36th Bienal de São Paulo is structured as a crossing: an estuary where voices, memories, and gestures from different shores meet and transform. Walking through the Pavilion, the public is invited to experience humanity as action, a verb that is conjugated in the plural, and to take with them the certainty that every encounter can be a starting point for new ways of living together.
Access the full program at 36.bienal.org.br/en/events/