Founded in 1951 in São Paulo, Brazil, at the time of Brazil's industrialisation, modernist architectural projects and the Cold War, the São Paulo Biennial embodied the 'biennial' model of the Venice Biennial, founded in 1895, becoming the second oldest biennial in the world. The São Paulo Biennial marked an important shift in the opening up of art practices, narratives and debates through exhibitions from Brazil and the South, between the debates related to the founding strategies of placing Brazilian modern art alongside European and American art, and the practices of decentering the Euro-American centres, and contest the eurocentric narratives.

A biennial, with the rhythm of its two-year reiteration, allows us to compare positions and engage in significant long-term debates. In any case, avoiding mechanistic chronologism of a biennial, we will enter into the São Paulo Biennial through stories, debates and spatial strategies that have troubled the dominant Western art canon, challenging any triumphalist narrative. With interest in the practice of rethinking previous editions that have opened space for the many agencies, narratives and contingent contexts that enliven the São Paulo Biennial over time, the seminar seeks to theorize through exhibition histories, and reflect how we can contribute to the debates from the analysis of the spatial strategies in particular.

Throughout the classes, we will be analyzing installation shots of the São Paulo Biennial exhibitions to (re)enter into the spaces; concepts and theoretical frameworks; and spatial strategies (displays, common spaces and platforms of discussion, architecture, environment). These materials are based on the research that I conducted at the Arquivo Histórico Wanda Svevo of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo.

We will begin by discussing the founding editions and the importance given to modern art within the larger display of artworks from different regions at the time of US political and economic expansionism in Latin America, engaging with the debates between internationalism and Latin American art that ran through the various editions and led to the creation of the parallel Bienal Latino-americana de São Paulo (1978). Later the 24th São Paulo Biennial (1998) worked on a Brazilian and Latin American critical art narrative through the local concept of anthropofagia, and a display strategy of “contamination”, playing an important role as a theoretical paradigm, research and exhibition display to open up postcolonial debates that have continued to be addressed and reworked.

We will continue to discuss the characteristics of the building and environment itself, since its space grounds the Biennial in a specific location. Since the II Biennial, it has been held in the Ibirapuera Park, with buildings by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and gardens by Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, both of which incorporate spatial strategies and elements that reflect local knowledges, such as the use of transitional spaces that connect indoor and outdoor spaces, and the extensive use of native plants by Burle Marx, transforming modern principles through elements and needs of the tropical context (tropical modernism).

A third debate that we will analyze has been the discussion and later abolition of national representations in the 27th São Paulo Biennial (2006), inherited from the Venice Biennale model. This took on various strategies, taking an early relevance at the time of the dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985) and the censorship felt especially by local artists who refused to 'represent' Brazil officially at the Biennial. The X São Paulo (1969), remembered as the Boycott Biennial, also drew attention to exiled artists and the fractured art histories that were taking place. With the country’s redemocratization in the mid 1980s, exhibitions continued to reflect on those contested legacies of the Cold War.

The course aims to learn from these debates and spatial practices in order to establish our own contemporary position, and possible contribution. The course will focus on class analysis. The first assignment for duos is in the form of a presentation in class. As a final assignment, and as a long-term goal, we will work together to co-conceptualize, co-create and co-write a spatial strategy activation that could contribute as an MA Spatial Strategies to the 36th edition of the São Paulo Biennial in September 2025, also involving the faculty and students at large. For this activity we will apply to the Biennial and for external funding, therefore the co-written proposal of the course is fundamental for this purpose.