18. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura – Terra [Earth]

Il progetto Terra [Earth] rappresenta il Brasile alla Biennale Architettura.

Comunicato stampa

The Fundação Bienal de São Paulo announces the project that will occupy the
Brazil Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia [Venice Biennale].
The exhibition is jointly curated by the architects Gabriela de Matos and Paulo Tavares, and features the
following collaborators, announced here: Mbya-Guarani Indigenous people; Tukano, Arawak and Maku
Indigenous peoples; Alaká Weavers (Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá); Ilê Axé Iyá Nassô Oká (Casa Branca do Engenho
Velho); Ana Flávia Magalhães Pinto; Ayrson Heráclito; Day Rodrigues with the collaboration of Vilma Patrícia
Santana Silva (Grupo Etnicidades FAU-UFBA); Fissura collective; Juliana Vicente; Thierry Oussou and Vídeo
nas Aldeias.
From a reflection on the Brazil of yesterday, of today and of the future, the exhibition places land at the centre
of the debate both as a poetic and as a concrete element in the exhibition space. To this end, the entire
pavilion will be filled with earth, putting the public in direct contact with the tradition of Indigenous territories,
Quilombola dwellings, and candomblé ceremonies.
"Our curatorial proposal is based on thinking of Brazil as earth. Earth as soil, fertiliser, ground and territory.
But also earth in its global and cosmic sense, as planet and common house of all life, human and non-human.
Earth as memory, and also as future, looking at the past and at heritage to expand the field of architecture in
the face of the most pressing contemporary urban, territorial and environmental issues," say the curators.
Elements of Brazilian popular dwellings are present at the entrance to the Brazilian pavilion and contrast with
the building's modernist features, such as the fences with the sankofa symbol – pertaining to an African writing
system called Adinkra, by the Akan people of West Africa, which has been widely used in fence designs and
can be seen in most Brazilian cities, meaning "to look at the knowledge of our ancestors in search of building
a better future".
The first gallery of the modernist pavilion has been named “De-colonizing the canon” by the curators,
questioning the imaginary surrounding the version that Brasília, the capital of Brazil, was built in the middle
of nowhere, given that its Indigenous and Quilombola inhabitants had been removed from the region in the
colonial period, and were finally pushed to the fringes with the imposition of the modernist city. The aim is
thus to show an image of a more complex, diverse and plural territory, architecture and heritage of national
formation and modernity in Brazil, presenting other narratives through architecture, landscape and heritage
neglected by the architectural canon. In a variety of formats, the works that fill the gallery range from the
Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
Parque Ibirapuera · Portão 3 · Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo
04094-000 · São Paulo · SP · Brasil
www.bienal.org.br
projection of an audiovisual work by the filmmaker Juliana Vicente, created in conjunction with the curatorship
and commissioned for the occasion, to a selection of archive photographs, compiled by the historian Ana
Flávia Magalhães Pinto, to the ethno-historical map of Brazil by Curt Nimuendajú and the “Brasília Quilombola
map”, the latter also commissioned for the occasion.
The second gallery, named "Places of Origin, Archaeologies of the Future", welcomes us with the
screening of the video by Ayrson Heráclito – The Shaking of the Casa da Torre and The Shaking of the
Maison des Esclaves in Gorée, from 2015 – and turns to memories and the archaeology of ancestrality.
Occupied by socio-spatial projects and practices of Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian knowledge about land and
territory, the curatorship brings forth five essential memorial heritages of reference: The Casa da Tia Ciata,
in the urban context of Pequena África in Rio de Janeiro; the Tava, as the Guarani call the ruins of the Jesuit
missions in Rio Grande do Sul; the ethnogeographic complex of terreiros in Salvador; the Indigenous
Agroforestry Systems of the Rio Negro in the Amazon; and the Iauaretê waterfall of the Tukano, Arawak and
Maku. The exhibition demonstrates what several scientific studies prove: that Indigenous and Quilombola
lands are the best preserved territories in Brazil, and in that way point towards a post-climate change future
where “de-colonization” and “decarbonization” walk hand in hand. Their practices, technologies and customs
linked to land management and production, like other ways of doing and understanding architecture, are
located in the earth, are equally universal and carry within themselves the ancestral knowledge to re-signify
the present and design other futures, for both human and nonhuman communities alike, towards another
planetary future.
For José Olympio da Veiga Pereira, president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, "the International
Architecture Exhibition of the Biennale di Venezia is a privileged space for the discussion of the most urgent
issues in architecture and urbanism, a field that ultimately reflects on our dynamics of life through the use
and sharing of common spaces as a society. At a time when humanity is facing great challenges, the
exhibition proposed by architects Gabriela de Matos and Paulo Tavares is a way of giving visibility to research
and practices that can contribute to the collective shaping of our future.”
About the curators
Gabriela de Matos is an Afro-Brazilian architect and urban planner, born in Vale do Rio Doce in Minas
Gerais, who creates multidisciplinary projects with the aim of promoting and highlighting Brazilian
architectural and urban culture from the perspective of race and gender. She graduated from the Faculty of
Architecture and Urbanism at PUC Minas in 2010, and, in 2016, specialized in Sustainability and
Management of the Built Environment at UFMG. A Master's student at Diversitas – Center for the Study of
Diversities, Intolerances and Conflicts of the Faculty of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences (FFLCH)
of the University of São Paulo, she currently teaches undergraduate Architecture and Urbanism at Escola da
Cidade. She is the CEO of Estúdio de Arquitetura – Gabriela de Matos, created in 2014. She is also vice-
president of the São Paulo department of the Brazilian Institute of Architects, and is the founder of the project
Arquitetas Negras, which maps the production of black Brazilian architects. De Matos researches architecture
produced in Africa and its diaspora with a focus on Brazil. Among other things, she proposes actions that
promote the debate on gender and race in architecture as a means of bringing visibility to the issue. She
was awarded Architect of the Year 2020 by IAB RJ.