Paul Mpagi Sepuya takes part in the 14th Mercosul Biennial in Brazil

"Estalo" helmed by chief curator Raphael Fonseca will open on 27 March 2025 in different spaces in Porto Alegre
At the 14th Mercosul Biennial, this title – "Estalo" – is an invitation to inhabit the movement and the transformation from one state to another. A living being acts on the other through dance, sonic matters, drawing, painting, video, or installation; we want to gather artists and works of art interested in "estalos" related to human beings and more than humans. If some of the research at the biennale is explosive due to its agitated, abrupt and iconophilic social context, other artists create visualities that, even though they seem quieter, just because they exist, can be seen as an "estalo". Let's not forget there are the grandiloquent crackles and the almost imperceptible ones – from the germination of a seed to the vibration of trap music beats; this project deals with metamorphosis.
 

What happens when one existence unites with others and, starting from a crowd, dances in a dark, artificially lit room or under the sunlight of a city like Porto Alegre? Which bodies are historically seen as subaltern and, in contemporary times, move boldly and confidently in the public space? How do the planet and its cycles, so affected by drastic ecological changes, generate movements that affect human bodies and other species with whom we are in daily contact? In what ways can being alive be seen as an act of resistance?

 

The sweat that one day runs through a body due to fear becomes a sweat that results from pleasure, warmth, courage, and affirmative propositions – in general terms, that is the rhythm we want to set in this edition of the Mercosul Biennial.

 

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November 28, 2024
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