Choreographies of the Impossible

Sculpture by the Afro-American artist Torkwase Dyson folding into the curves of the circulation ramps

The Parque do Ibirapuera is one of the few large open spaces in São Paulo. It is home to a number of important cultural institutions including The Bienal Pavilion. Designed in the early 1950s by a team  led by Oscar Niemeyer, its open floors, ramps, and views across the park make it a fantastic location for the international art festival. This year, under the enigmatic title Choreographies of the Impossible, the curators set out to create an experimental space that was “open to dances of the unimaginable.” Many of the artworks are overtly political and privilege the voices of the marginalised and excluded. Centre stage as you enter the ground floor is a working kitchen organised by the Movimento Sem Teto do Centro, a sister organisation of the MST. Campaigning on behalf of the homeless, the MSTC target empty buildings and idle urban land that doesn’t appear to have any clear social function. In arguments that remind me of the squatting scene in London back in the late seventies and early eighties, they claim that with the number of abandoned buildings in São Paulo, there is no reason for anyone to be homeless. Occupation in this respect is an expression of the right guaranteed in law to have a roof over your head. Paintings by an inmate of a psychiatric institute, vast colorful surreal landscapes by indigenous artists, and the afro-Brazilian photographic archive, Zumvi, are indicative of the exhibition’s ambitions. A highlight for me were the printworks of the Mexican Taller de Grafica Popular, Office of Popular Graphics. Founded in 1937 and descended from the League of Revolutionary Artists and Writers, their mission was to make art in the service of the people and to pursue revolutionary causes. Technically highly skilled, their lithographs, etchings, and silk screens that illustrate the struggle for social justice echo the politicised art of the 1920s European avant-garde. It is inspiring stuff, and a reminder in the immortal words of Bertolt Brecht that “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”