Biennial Foundation announces curatorial team

The Mercosur Biennial Foundation announces Raphael Fonseca as chief curator of its 14th edition. Fonseca will lead the artistic team  which has as joint curators Tiago Sant’Ana and Yina Jiménez Suriel who is from the Dominican Republic. The edition will take place in September 2024 in Porto Alegre.

Held in a post-pandemic historical moment, the 14th Mercosur Biennial has the challenge of approaching a more comprehensive local and external audience, reinforcing its international character and its links with Latin Americ. In a statement, chief curator Raphael Fonseca says

Being the curator of the 14th Mercosur Biennial is a great honor. All exhibition projects on the scale of a biennial are a mirror of the time in which it takes place. We will have a great challenge and immense responsibility in composing teams, thinking about conceptual cuts, exhibition locations, artists, programs, and publications.

One of the pillars of the next Biennial, informs Fonseca, will be the elaboration of an exhibition circuit in several institutional spaces throughout Porto Alegre and adjacent areas, thus designing visitation maps that will allow the public not only to appreciate works in cultural spaces but also to understand the dynamics, movements, and discourses of the city. “Since moving around will be central to the project we are developing for the Mercosur Biennial, we want the public to be able to do so while walking through the urban space where the exhibition happens,” explains the chief curator.

Although the concept has not yet been presented, the curatorial team – the youngest in the history of the Biennial – works with a research horizon based on the contemporary field and looks at the possible relationships and exchanges between different generations of artists and different geographies of the Global South.

Another significant novelty for the 2024 edition of the Biennial is the creation of a Public Programs section, curated by Anna Mattos and Marina Feldens. Both bring experience in creating artistic projects, curating, and producing exhibitions, and a power of articulation with the local community of Porto Alegre demonstrated through the work they develop in the art space Força e Luz.

Also, a key sector for the Mercosur Biennial, the educational sector will be curated by the Brazilian artist Andréa Hygino, recognized for her works that usually discuss the relationship between education and artistic processes, in addition to Michele Ziegt, who has experience with the Biennial of Mercosur since 2011 and researches the relationship between Language, Culture, and Education.

The Biennial’s artistic team is complete with assistant curator Fernanda Medeiros and has the collaboration of Estúdio Margem – who is responsible for the entire design and visual identity of the edition. The architect Juliana Godoy’s office will be challenged to prepare the spatialization, architecture, and exhibition design of the various presentations that will integrate the show.

The presidency of the Mercosur Biennial remains in the hands of Rio Grande do Sul businesswoman Carmen Ferrão, who also coordinated activities in the 2022 edition of the event.

Curatorial Team 14th Mercosur Biennial

Raphael Fonseca (Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1988) has been curator of modern and contemporary Latin American art at the Denver Art Museum since 2021. He holds a PhD in Art History and Criticism from the State University of Rio de Janeiro. Alongside Renée Akitelek Mboya, he curates the 22nd Contemporary Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil (São Paulo, 2023). From 2017 to 2020, he was a curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Niterói. Amongst his exhibitions, we can highlight Who tells a tale adds a tail (Denver Art Museum, 2022); The silence of tired tongues (Framer Framed, Amsterdam, 2022); Raio-que-o-parta: ficções do moderno no Brasil (Sesc 24 de Maio, São Paulo, 2022); Sweat (Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2021), and Vaivém (Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, and Belo Horizonte, 2019–2020). He lives and works in Denver, United States.

Tiago Sant’Ana (Santo Antônio de Jesus, Bahia, 1990) is a curator, visual artist, and researcher. He holds a PhD in Culture and Society from the Federal University of Bahia. From 2019 to 2022, he coordinated the Goethe-Institut’s exhibition program in Salvador, in addition to accompanying artists at the Vila Sul Residency. In 2014, he was assistant curator at the 3rd Bahia Biennial. He has won national and international awards, such as the Soros Arts Fellowship from the Open Society Foundations and the ZUM Photography Scholarship from the Moreira Salles Institute. As a visual artist, he has participated in national and international exhibitions, in countries such as Germany, the United States, Holland, Italy, and Portugal, having works in collections such as MASP, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Moreira Salles Institute, and the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia. He lives and works in Salvador, Brazil.

Yina Jiménez Suriel (La Vega, Dominican Republic, 1994) is a curator and researcher with a master’s degree in visual studies. Her practice is a continuous investigation into contemporary emancipatory processes and imagination construction. She is the curator of The Current IV by TBA21-Academy, a three-year research project entitled otras montañas, las que andan sueltas bajo el agua. She is the Associate Editor of the Contemporary And América Latina (C&AL), a magazine focusing on Latin America and the Caribbean. She has done residencies at Delfina Foundation (London, England) and Kadist San Francisco. She is part of the curatorial team for the Opening section at the ArcoMadrid art fair for the 2023 and 2024 editions. She has participated in several public programs and workshops on an international scale, and her texts have been included in several publications. She lives and works in Santiago, Dominican Republic.

Fernanda Medeiros (Uruguaiana, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 1989) is a curator, producer, and researcher. She was assistant curator at the Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art (MARGS) from 2019 to 2022. She is the founder and editor of Cactus Edições, an artist publications label. She is one of the producers and creators of the C4NN3S video art festival and the Folhagem publishing fair. She was the coordinator of the Documentation and Research Center of the Vera Chaves Barcellos Foundation (2012-2019), and founding partner, curator, and producer at Acervo Independente (2014-2017). She lives and works in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Andréa Hygino (Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1992) is a visual artist, art educator, and teacher. Her work focuses on the school environment, learning processes, training, discipline, and repetition, and she finds student disobedience the necessary place for challenge and creation. In the artist’s works, childhood memories – of the school created by her mother, which was operated at home – are intertwined with present-day experiences as an artist-teacher/teacher-artist and the condition of public education in Brazil. She has won the 3rd SeLecT Art and Education Award (Education Shirt category) and the 2022 FOCO ARTRio Award. She lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Michele Ziegt (Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 1980) operates in transdisciplinary axes, developing research, workshops, and actions that relate the areas of Language, Culture, and Education. She is a writer and professor of Literature and Writing, teaching since 2000. Her training as an art educator took place through multiple participations in the Mercosur Biennial, starting in 2011. She is the co-coordinator of the Orisun Oro label, an editorial web of Amefrican women publishing bilingual editions of renowned black poets from Latin America and the Caribbean, previously unpublished in Brazil. She lives and works in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Anna Mattos (Cabo Frio, Rio de Janeiro, 1993) has been a cultural producer for over 12 years. She coordinates the execution of projects at Força e Luz, in which she helps organize the Foundation’s educational and cultural activities. She has coordinated the Ado Malagoli Gallery at the Institute of Arts of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (2018-2020) and produced over 20 exhibitions in the past 5 years. She is the founder, producer, and manager of Gazzebo Gallery. She lives and works in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Marina Feldens (Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 1994) works as a cultural producer, curator, and art educator. She manages the Educational-Cultural Center at the art space Força e Luz, where she organizes the Foundation’s educational activities and cultural events. In 2016, she coordinated the Ado Malagoli Gallery at the UFRGS Institute of Arts. She is the founder, producer, and curator of Gazzebo Gallery. She lives and works in Porto Alegre, Brazil.