The thirty sixth Bienal de São Paulo is titled Not All Travellers Stroll Roads—Of Humanity as Apply. It takes its identify from a poem by the Afro-Brazilian author Conceição Evaristo titled Da calma e do silêncio (Of Calm and Silence). The 1990 poem was revealed within the Cadernos Negros (Black Notebooks) collection, an ongoing publication based in São Paulo within the late Nineteen Seventies that promotes and preserves African diasporic literature in Brazil, a rustic the place this sort of literature has been traditionally marginalised in mainstream publishing homes.
The textual content of the poem “provides a language to talk of the unspeakable and teaches us that silence will not be a void—it’s a place of accumulation, of ancestry and of inside resistance”, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, the chief curator of the 2025 Bienal de São Paulo, tells The Artwork Newspaper. “Evaristo’s work invitations us to pay attention to what’s typically excluded from dominant narratives. Within the context of the Bienal, which is usually perceived as hypervisible and hypermediated, her poetics push us to carve out moments of stillness and introspection.” The curator says that he and his staff requested themselves: “How will we exhibit silence?”
The primary a part of the title, Not All Travellers Stroll Roads, references “these whose paths are nonlinear, whose journeys are erased, undocumented or ancestral”, Ndikung says, whereas Of Humanity as Apply “insists that to be human will not be a hard and fast state, however a steady and unfinished act”.
Ndikung labored with the curators Alya Sebti, Keyna Eleison, Anna Roberta Goetz and Thiago de Paula Souza. The biennial staff additionally contains the German publicist Henriette Gallus, within the newly shaped function of technique and communications adviser. “One of the vital highly effective features of this Bienal is the deeply collaborative spirit at its core,” Sebti says.
This yr’s biennial options 125 artists, of which 28 are Brazilian. There are additionally a number of artists represented who’ve by no means exhibited work within the nation earlier than—similar to Frank Bowling, who shall be represented by a career-spanning set up of 25 work and works on paper.
Round half of the works within the biennial are new commissions and shall be unveiled throughout the preview on 5 September. These embrace shows by the artists Valuable Okoyomon, Theresah Ankomah, Gê Viana, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Andrew Roberts, Emeka Ogboh, Laure Prouvost and Myriam Omar Awadi.
Exterior of the principle pavilion, a brand new efficiency programme known as Tributaries could have its premiere. It was created in collaboration with the cultural centre Casa do Povo, a São Paulo establishment based within the Fifties and recognized for its progressive strategy. Casa do Povo has “a major historical past as a spot of resistance”, Goetz says. “It embodies the spirit of this biennial par excellence.”
Casa do Povo’s inventive director, Benjamin Seroussi, and Daniel Blanga Gubbay of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels have organised a roster of performances that embrace rhythmic parades and readings by the Brazilian choreographer Marcelo Evelin. Boxe Autônomo, the singer Dorothée Munyaneza, Alexandre Paulikevitch and Mexa may even carry out within the coming months as a part of the collection.
thirty sixth Bienal de São Paulo, Not All Travellers Stroll Roads—Of Humanity as Apply, 6 September 2025-11 January 2026
