Fundação Bienal begins, in March 2019, the program of traveling exhibitions of the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo – Affective Affinities, a show that received 736,000 visitors at the Bienal Pavilion in Ibirapuera Park, from September to December, 2018. With this initiative, seven cities in Brazil and one abroad are already confirmed to receive selections of artworks featured at the Bienal: Belo Horizonte (MG), Campinas (SP), Vitória (ES), Juiz de Fora (MG), São José do Rio Preto (SP), Brasília (DF), Porto Alegre (RS) and Medellín (Colombia).

For the realization of the program, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo established new partnerships with the Secretaria de Estado da Cultura do Governo do Estado do Espírito Santo (ES), the Museu Nacional da República (DF), the Fundação Iberê Camargo (RS) and the Museo de Antioquia, in Medellín (Colombia). Additionally, institutional collaborations with Sesc SP, Fundação Clóvis Salgado (MG) and the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (MG) were renewed.

The traveling exhibitions of the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo were conceived by guest curator Jacopo Crivelli Visconti as new experiences in relation to the original project developed by this edition’s chief curator, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro. The show held in São Paulo consisted in a combination of elements: the general concept of the Bienal; the seven different exhibitions organized by seven artist-curators; the individual participations of artists invited directly by the chief curator; and the relations that were created among all these instances.

For the traveling exhibitions, the aim was to emphasize where artworks, artists and thoughts – which at the 33rd Bienal appeared separated and distant – approach and mutually attract one another, just like the molecules and elements cited by Goethe in his novel Elective Affinities (1809), one of the references of the project by Pérez-Barreiro. In this sense, the exhibitions that will circulate in 2019 do not literally replicate what was seen at the last Bienal, but rather present different associations and relationships based on cross-sections of artworks and artists.

Actions of Diffusion

The program of traveling exhibitions will promote activities for professors, educators and mediators who work with the public in the program’s partner institutions. Based on the contents of the 33rd Bienal and its educational publication, Invitation to Attention, the activities propose exercises that invite people to be attentive to the experience of art, in everything from the first contact with the work to the sharing of reflections about it.