Eros - No. 2

Eros - No. 1

Black and White - No. 4

• Circuito Athenas - Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) - 2011.

The winners - No. 12

• Circuito Athenas - Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) - 2011.

The winners - No. 11

• Circuito Athenas - Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) - 2011.

Carnival - No. 3

• Cordão do Boitatá - Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) - 2011

The winners - No. 10

 

• Circuito Athenas - Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) - 2011.

Carnival - No. 2

• Cordão do Boitatá - Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) -2011

The winners - No. 9

• Circuito Athenas - Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) - 2011.

Carnival - No. 1

• Cordão do Boitatá - Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) - 2011

Osaín's child - No. 13

Black and White - No. 3

Maná Cubiú

Osaín's child - No. 12

Black and White - No. 2

Faces and Phrases

• Zanele Muholi (South Africa) - 29ª Bienal de São Paulo
• Zanele Muholi's art overlaps with her role at the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), an organization of black lesbians in Gauteng, and with her work as a photojournalist for the online magazine Behind the Mask, which broaches the theme of homosexuality in South Africa. Her visual and gender activism is an attempt to amplify the voice and enlarge the space of these women, a very specific identitary platform within contemporary South African society. Excluded by other queer movements, generally coordinated by male, homosexual, European, and North American elements, this almost invisible and underground community is highly stigmatized and a target for prejudice, aggression, rape, and murder. Each of the women portrayed in the series Faces and Phrases fulfils a specific role and expresses a specific social identity within the black lesbian community, be they athletes, actresses, researchers, lawyers, dancers, or filmmakers. Together, these images challenge sensationalism and victimization by eschewing explicit violence in favor of the intimate, empathetic, and positive celebration of difference and unity in the faces of these protagonists of resistance. (From: 29ª Bienal)

Osaín's child - No. 11

Animal - No. 2

Slings

• Nnenna Okore (Australia) - 29ª Bienal de São Paulo
•  "The basis of Nnenna Okore's work is daily life. The artist works with things she finds, from newspapers and magazines to the most varied fabrics, to which she applies different procedures, such as collage, sewing, embroidery and dyeing, deforming and remodeling them into sculptures in which the recycled material acquires new dimensions and meaning, raising questions of overproduction, surplus and waste. In Slings, the artist rolls up newspapers into scrolls, forming asymmetric organic-looking and visceral clumps, bundled into thick jute slings. Though suspended in this manner, the sculptures lie against the wall as if its smooth white surface somehow guided the reading of the works as a linear narrative. Nnenna Okore lends a whole new aura to these reading materials by depriving them of their informative function, at the same time as she engages them in a protest against excess by hanging them on exhibition walls as an installation." (From: 29ª Bienal)

Black and White - No. 1

Inimigos

• Gil Vicente  (Brazil) - 29ª Bienal de São Paulo
• "The work of Gil Vicente translates a sense of uneasiness about the prevailing modes of political representation, expressing deep disillusion as to the possibility of change through formally constituted leadership and warning of a sapping of patience that has often led others to violent confrontation. In his work, Gil Vicente does not look to confuse art and crime, but rather to substitute the crime as act with the creation of its explicit image. In Inimigos, a series of life-size realist drawings in charcoal on paper, the artist assumes the role of the assassin of political leaders who, presiding over different geographic domains, hold distinct if not conflicting world views." From: 29ª Bienal

Wording - No. 5

Osaín's child - No. 10

Alive and well - No. 18

Escada

•  José Spaniol  (Brazil) - 29ª Bienal de São Paulo
• "For the Bienal, Spaniol develops an installation that materializes in accumulative actions. In the first of these, in which he molds some beaten earth, the artist tensions the empty space of the building, constructing Escada that almost reaches the ceiling. He then takes a series of white marble dishes, thinly coated in oil paint and distributes them about the space; lastly, adjustments and rectifications can bring new objects and words to the conjunct, already replete with material and qualities. Enigmatic and difficult to quantify, the installation reverberates with imagetic and literary echoes that make up the artist's repertoire, materializing an ineffable environment. "  (From: 29ª Bienal)