Live Uncertainty: 32nd Biennial of São Paulo in Serralves

An Exhibition After the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo was organized by the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo in collaboration with the Fundação de Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemporânea, marking the second time the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto received the Bienal de São Paulo in Europe. Titled Incerteza Viva (Live Uncertainty), the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo reflected on the current conditions of life and the strategies offered by contemporary art to harbor or inhabit uncertainty. The Porto presentation brought together projects from 14 artists and collectives, out of the nearly 90 who exhibited in São Paulo. The Serralves Museum commissioned five architecture studios from Porto — depA, Diogo Aguiar Studio, Fahr, fala atelier, and Ottotto — to design and build temporary structures in the park to host works by Gabriel Abrantes, Jonathas de Andrade, Cecilia Bengolea & Jeremy Deller, Priscila Fernandes, and Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca. Inside the museum, works by Lais Myrrha, Lourdes Castro, Vídeo nas Aldeias, Leon Hirszman, Grada Kilomba, and Sonia Andrade were on display. The decision to spread the exhibition across both the building and the surrounding parkland gave it a distinctive character — the Serralves director Suzanne Cotter noted that, just as the Bienal in São Paulo has an identity strongly anchored in the Oscar Niemeyer pavilion set within the Ibirapuera Park, Serralves shares a similar DNA, with its Álvaro Siza-designed building equally embedded in a park landscape.