After Venice, the second line of Sao Paulo is one of the oldest and most influential biennials in the world. Since its launch in 1951, it has been a key engine for transformation, merger and internationalization in Brazil and the entire South American art world. The 36th edition will be open on September 6 this year and will be expected to become a book until January 11, 2026. Titled “Nem Todo Andante Andane Estradas / da Handanidade comprática” (“Not all travelers walk/human as a path of practice”), the event takes humanity as a growing life practice, a growing life practice that forms numerous attitudes in a relationship that needs to be constantly reconceived, facing non-contrast and conflict and exploring one another.
Curator Paula Souza “class=”Company-Link”> Thiago de Paula Souza tells observers during the busy St. Paul Art Week. “How does a person become human, is this about humanity? How about a person exercising and practicing? If humans were verbs, how would we yoke? ”
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De Paula Souza is part of a diverse concept team led by Chief Curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, working with co-curators Alya Sebti, Anna Roberta Goetz and Paula Souza, along with Keyna Eleson as a campaigner and Henriette Gallus, and conducting on strategy and communication. This polyphonic curation model provides a broad view. “We followed a research path that reflects bird migration routes, how they browse the world in the seasons,” said de Paula Souza. This approach supports the cohesive but deep multicultural perspective of the world while actively avoiding what he calls “commodification of identity”, a trend that saturates the contemporary art world in recent years. Artists were not chosen for token markings of identity rather than for the conceptual and poetic power of their work: “We are interested in how different subjectivity extends our understanding of what it means to be human – how communities imagine and embody human existence on this planet.”
The challenges of the biennale are conceived within this wide range. “Even if you can come up with a very powerful and complex curatorial concept, it can still talk to a wider audience,” said De Paula Souza. The binary of São Paulo is very popular – Brazilians from different backgrounds are involved, and it is one of the most important cultural events in the country. Historically, it’s free, it’s free, it’s free, and extends to the park, thus expanding its public influence and resonance. “Sometimes people just walk around the park and have picnics, they may not fully realize what is once a year and have an accidental encounter with art. That's why the second line has to be able to speak to everyone.”
The 36th Bienal de Sao Paulo drew a mysterious poem from the African-Brazilian poet Conceição Evaristo, Calma e dosilêncio ((Calmness and silence), the long forgotten writer wrote: “Not every traveler/walking road,/has a submerged world,/just silence/poetry.” These lines form the conceptual entry point for the exhibition constructed around three core axes – a recycling space and time that requires the public to see themselves reflected in others and take into account the necessary interrelationships of existence, while a estuary serves as a symbol and metaphor for generating encounters.
Thiago de Paula Souza told Observer that the building will be transformed into a place of all kinds of narratives and sounds. “We are imagining the Pavilion as the estuary, which is this encounter in different waters where salt water and fresh water meet.” This transformation will become a powerful symbolic metaphor that translates Brazil’s history, marked by the fusion of indigenous peoples, Europeans and enslaved Africans. Within this framework, the exhibition will explore how culture manages differences through new models of ideas and beauty, navigates conflict and pursues coexistence, drawing inspiration from writers such as Patrick Chamoiseau and édouard Glissant. “It took eighteen months to build this lilac,” said De Paula Souza. “We are not responding to every event at the moment, but the show is a portrait of our time, which defines the breakdown, conflict and transformation of the human condition today.”
Many of these ideas have been tested through a series of global “callings” held in southern cities around the world in 2024 and 2025. These events are organized in partnership with local cultural institutions, part lectures, part performances, part rituals – held in Morocco, Guadeloupe, Tanzania and Japan. “They are called summoning because we try to evoke the energy we want to bring to the exhibition,” explains De Paula Souza. The core focus has always been on sound and sound traditionally – music, rhythm and sound have a connection between various cultures.
Morocco encounters this series Soufflé: In-depth listening and active reception It happened in Marrakech and Dar Bellarj, 18. Led by Laila Hida and Maha Elmadi, the event focused on the lasting of breathing, exploring the traditions of Gnawa and Sufi cultures, and questioning that listening has become a practice of coexistence.
After the first “call” bigidimèpatonbé! ((Totter, but never fall!), published in December at Les Abymes of Guadeloupe, which focuses on dance as a practice of body adaptation and resistance. In February, the Biennale landed in Zanzibar Mawali-Taqsim: Improvisation as a space and technology for humansit explores not only the view of Taarab as a rhythm, but also the encounter and multiple communication tools on the east coast of Africa. Finally, a few weeks ago, the Binary of St. Paul ended the series in Tokyo Bukimi no tani (Grieved in Taste): Incredible Valley – The Emotion of Humanoidsquestion how humans encounter, adapt and integrate technology imaging.
While the complete list of participating artists was not announced until late May, these moments of encounters and exchanges will come together at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion. Crucially, the series, and in recent years, have shaped the broader curatorial framework of second-tier creatures, marks the construction of a truly multicultural platform to build a truly multicultural platform in this unstable historical moment. Beyond the scope of identity, geography and chronology, the latest version of Bienal de Sao Paulo will attempt to address the human condition at a truly universal scale.
