19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil: Southern Panoramas | Commissioned Projects

The exhibition Southern Panoramas | Commissioned Projects is a new feature of the Sesc_Videobrasil Contemporary Art Festival, that for the first time issued an open call for projects to be commissioned and featured in its 19th edition. The following artists were selected from among 446 project entries by artists from 71 countries: Carlos Monroy (b. 1984, Bogota, Colombia), Cristiano Lenhardt (b. 1975, Itaara, Brazil), Keli-Safia Maksud (b. 1985, Nairobi, Kenya) and Ting-Ting Cheng (b. 1985, Taiwan). The selected artists worked on their projects with oversight from the Festival’s curatorial committee. This initiative extends the curators’ involvement beyond the actual selection, engaging them in direct, continuous dialogue with the artists in developing their creative processes, in an extended time relationship.

Carlos Monroy participates with “Llorando se foi. O museu da lambada. In memoriam de Francisco ‘Chico’ Oliveira”, which connects two phenomena from 1980s in Brazil: the rise of the lambada dance and music style, as well as its effects upon the building of national identity, and the advent and exponential growth of Bolivian immigration to São Paulo. In “Superquadra-Sací”, a film by the Cristiano Lenhardt, national Indigenous roots converge with the “cityscape,” the urban scenery, with throwbacks to Brazilian modernism. “Mitumba”, by Keli-Safia Maksud, explores the ties between the history of soap in the United Kingdom and African fabrics in Victorian-era Netherlands. The artist discusses the image of racial hygiene and African identity through textiles viewed globally as an authentic expression of Africa. “The Atlas of Places that do not exist”, a project by Ting-Ting Cheng, is about a library containing hundreds of books on non-existent places, a questioning of borders and definitions of reality.

Southern Panoramas | Commissioned Projects marks the opening of the Galpão VB, headquarters of the Associação Cultural Videobrasil, a space dedicated to the permanent activation of the Videobrasil Collection and to developing creative and reflective processes through exhibitions, artistic residencies, creative laboratories, film programs, workshops and meetings.