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5, three months late, had set out to discuss “[It is something that] recontextualizes a K. Le Guin. “What I think as an artist is that the
in 2020 “We were talking about necropolitics, feminism of the 1990s, which concealed the role of art is perhaps to provoke reconnections,
fanaticism, capitalist patriarchy, extraction and ideological analysis by stating that gender to imagine other possibilities”, concluded Aline.
ecological devastation. The pandemic only came equality was already a step over,” she said. “With
to deepen the gap that separates the countries this criticism, Marwa went looking for a feminism anCestralitY anD resistanCe
of the global south from the place where we are,” beyond a kind of liberal middle class life, which In his speech, Edgar Calel initially considered
pondered Lisette in her opening speech at the vi she found in ecological activism. In this film, that we are the product of nature and the ancient
International Virtual Seminar ARTE!Brasileiros. the rural area is the territory where the fight cultures of the world, such as the one he was
The conversation was mediated by the for land takes place and where these women born and raised in Guatemala. The artist then
journalist Fabio Cypriano, with the participation are also guardians of seeds, water sources and read an excerpt from an account of the creation
of the Spanish Agustín Pérez Rubio (from the biodiversity. We see here an example of the of the universe according to Popol Vuh, a Mayan
curatorial team of the Berlin Biennial, alongside figure of a caring and activist artist.” documentary record from the 16th century.
Lisette, the Chilean María Berríos and the Marwa’s activism ends up finding echoes in “Under this panorama of ancestral indigenous
Argentine Renata Cervetto) and two of the artists the sphere of contemporary art, also regulated literature, it seems interesting to me how,
selected for the exhibition , the Brazilian Aline by the logic of extraction, said the curator. “I through art, people are able to cross different
Baiana and the Guatemalan Edgar Calel. bring, like her, the concern to avoid transforming physical and time spaces, and with that we
Still at the opening, Lisette expressed some these precarious lives into commodities unite ancient and contemporary situations,
discomfort with the seminar’s subtitle, The Art worshiped at international biennials. How to with the need to listen to the past for project the
of Possible. “Our job as producers and cultural prevent the appropriation of these genuine future. Part of my job is to do these physical and
agents is always to deal with the impossible,” knowledges from turning into something else temporal journeys as well”, said Edgar.
she said. “It is very difficult to put the concept through the exploitation of others’ sores”. The artist took the video Sueño de obsidiana
of solidarity when an international, European to the Berlin exhibition, made in collaboration
biennial announces its dates, despite the fact the Cross oF Colonialismo with São Paulo native Fernando Pereira Santos.
that the artists are still in lockdown in the Aline Baiana began her participation by In it, Edgar represents an indigenous ritual
countries of the global south. I wanted to draw questioning the difficulty, on the part of science, linked to the land, having as scenario one of
attention to the violence intrinsic to the initial of perceiving Afro-Brazilian or indigenous the icons of Brazilian modernist architecture,
decision to make the biennial happen in 2020 “. knowledge as such, relegating to these the Bienal building, in São Paulo. With the skin
For the curator, the “most substantial chapter perspectives a fabulous character, often in of a jaguar, his animal spirit according to the
of the biennial” - whose epilogue, entitled children’s books. Guatemalan tradition, or a blue sweater, which
The crack begins within, will be shown until “What I try to do with my work is to share these is displayed in the daadgalerie, and in which he
November 1 in the German capital - had been understandings of the world and to tension them sewed the names of the indigenous languages
opened in September 2019, with workshops, with the Western understanding, hegemonic of his country, the artist speaks of anti-colonial
small exhibitions and performances, in the [...] a way to collaborate for the anti-colonial resistance through reconnection with ancestry.
Berlin Wedding neighborhood, in a space that struggle”, explains Aline, who presents in Berlin “Taking this walk in that concrete building,
proposed listening and exchanging with local the installation The southern cross. being an indigenous person of Mayan descent,
residents, mostly immigrants. “This work started, as an idea, when the is a statement about the destruction of the
“There was a whole dynamic of being together environmental crime took place in Mariana [the limits, the borders imposed between countries
and suddenly we were interrupted in this way Brumadinho dam burst in January 2019]. I was like Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, etc. We are all
of working”. It was necessary, continued the shocked and disturbed seeing those images of one. This, for me, is something fundamental,
curator, to create what she calls an ethical the river dead by a company that has already that we must contribute to this other possible
protocol: “To say that we would not give an taken its name [Vale do Rio Doce], which made world”, he argued.
inch in our position and, in this sense, the me think of this place of infinite exploration that
word possible is dangerous because it may Brazil and other southern countries occupy. goD anD Devil
seem opportunistic. Rosa Luxemburg said that And as the mining risks are obliterated from the “This is a biennial of sensitive capital, of
opportunism is the art of the possible. And I final product, they are left to the populations. ” relationship capital,” said Agustín Pérez Rubio,
want to insist that, when doing a biennial in The choice of the work’ name also contained a when he began his participation. “And also, what
these conditions, we have to worry about our criticism: the constellation, symbol of Mercosur perhaps the pandemic has made us value it more,
own principles. And don’t bend to those dictated and present in flags of many countries in the an idea of cure, of a healer, not only of healing
by an exceptional situation.” hemisphere, represented as a cross, from a anything, but of accompanying, caring,” he said.
Christian perspective, in a colonizing act. Agustín used the image of Edgar dressed
aCtivist artist Aline also explained why the idea of “art of in jaguar skin, in the Bienal building, to talk
In the virtual seminar, Lisette exemplified the the possible” bothered her, remembering two about another section of the Berlin exhibition:
political weight of the show, initially presenting phrases: “It is easier to imagine the end of the fanaticism and the god of capitalism, of the
the American Marwa Arsanios and her trilogy world than the end of capitalism”, by the British internet and, in the case of the Guatemalan
Who’s afraid of ideology?. The work reflects, Mark Fisher, in the book Capitalist Realism. “We artist’s work, an idea of contemporary art church,
said the curator, an ecological feminism that live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable incorporated by the modernist construction.
since 2017 marks the work of Marwa, together - but until then, the divine right of kings also According to him, it is important to open cracks
with women who participate in movements for seemed. Any human power can be resisted in institutions such as the biennial and museums,
the fight for land, in places like northern Syria and changed by human beings. Resistance and for these questions: “For artists like Edgar to
and Colombia. change often begin in art”, by American Ursula show us how, in an icon of Brazilian modernity,

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