Amanda Carneiro: Curation That Operates Outside Dominant Systems

C&AL: Mozambique forms part of your academic career and you’ve conducted research on artistic spaces like Festac ’77. I’m curious about what these spaces have taught you, what other references you use when imagining exhibitions and how your idea of a “museum” as a place of visibility and knowability has changed in recent years? Considering the recurring task of deconstructing colonial narratives within these spaces through art and research.

AC: Through my research and my time living in Mozambique, I learned about what is possible to produce in contexts of disputes, by imagining a radically new world. Artists like Bertina Lopes and Malangatana Ngwenya have created works that blend tradition and contemporaneity, often in an interdisciplinary way, in dialogue with poetry or dance and exemplify this vision. Festac ’77, in turn, represents a real utopia, encouraging dialogue between people, countries, artistic and intellectual communities in Africa and the diaspora. It was a meeting of the then so-called “third world” that planted seeds in multiple territories and continues to bear fruit, many of which are yet to be better appreciated and researched. More than a space of resistance, I see Festac ’77 as the greatest cultural event of re-existence, whose grammar of radicality was not tied to the rules of the game imposed hegemonically, but incorporated difference, contradiction and dissent as engines of transformation.

C&AL: Regarding the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2024, where you worked as artistic organizer, what have you been confronted with and what excites you most about curating from a Southern Hemisphere perspective?

AC: Participating in the curatorial team of the Venice Biennale has been a process of great learning, not only about art, but also about the system that exhibits it. Every exhibition comprises what is presented and the countless stories that leave behind traces and clues, behind what is seen, going beyond the exhibition itself: encounters with the people who worked, supported, visited, criticized and were moved by it; all of them important and with which it was possible to reflect.

There were artist encounters that touched me deeply, maybe because I never imagined seeing them taking place so close to me. One example was with Bertina Lopes and Rubem Valentim. Both of them were in Rome at the same time, producing totems as one of the themes of their paintings, and we don’t know whether they ever met. Or seeing Aref Rayess with Kay WalkingStick, producing in the landscape genre in registers as distinct as they are beautiful.

There were also personal encounters, such as with Anna Maria Maiolino, who returned to Italy to produce her installations countless tons of clay and, being so similar to Leilah Babirye’s sculptures, cuaght her interest. Or the experience of Mahkus, the collective of Huni Kuin artists who left their village, Chico Curumim, to spend three months painting a mural with the support of young artists from the university, who had their experience with art transformed.

Or, when artist Daniel Otero was reunited with his long-time friend Kiluanji Kia Henda, who shared a session at Arsenale. It was also exciting to watch installations taking shape, like those by Bouchra Khalili or Wangshui, which were previously just plans and images. Or the performance program with Joshua Serafin, Gunes Terkol and so many others, which brilliantly challenged the sometimes-static nature of an exhibition that goes on for seven months. I could name countless other encounters, which ultimately resulted from contact with works of art I’ve come across so many times, but without ever seeing them in person, and which I was thrilled to encounter in person, as if I were meeting an old friend. Being part of an event of this magnitude, with the challenges it necessarily imposes, was already a confrontation, which continues to reverberate within me, with questions for the rest of my life. There was, however, one aspect that caught my attention, especially after the opening: the way in which all these dialogues are perceived. All of this has been very fruitful and has taught me a lot.

This text was produced with the support of  Salta Art.

Amanda Carneiro is artistic organizer of the 60th International Art Exhibition, co-editor of Afterall Magazine and curator at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP). She recently co-organized exhibitions and catalogues for Carmézia Emiliano, Madalena Santos Reinbolt and Abdias Nascimento, at MASP. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social history from the University of São Paulo, where she is a PhD candidate in social history, researching the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, known as Festac ’77. Carneiro worked alongside curator Adriano Pedroso, artistic organizer Sofia Gotti, architect Juliana Ziebell and Estúdio Campo, responsible for the visual identity of the 60th Venice Biennale.

Sheila Ramirez is a Cuban-Angolan designer and researcher exploring ancestral cosmologies woven into our closets through archives and musicalities from Africa and the Caribbean.

Translation: Zoë Perry.