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ENGLISH VERSION ORIGINS

occupation in a different way, they were still be the same architecture. The main with Viviane Matesco. In 1992 he went to the
effectively contesting, challenging the house has to be demolished. For me the United States, took a master’s degree in art at
system. When you can’t change the walls, issue of architecture is very important California Institute of the Arts, af er five years
you change the content and documenta because I see that every public space is he returned to Brazil and exhibited at Funarte’s
last year tried to do that. So, what you being designed in such a way that when Macunaíma project and at Centro Cultural
can do if you are inside a given space is you enter you know what you are entering São Paulo, also in the early 1990s, where he
to transform it into a quilombo or rethink and behave as you are expected to behave showed work with an almost ethnographic
that space based on that city, but within in that space. It is the dictatorship of profile that brought the memory of the queer
that environment that was built by social architecture. body, made with towels stolen from saunas.
forces that are racist, patriarchal, using “Those white towels, folded on a shelf, and the
the space in the same way possible. – In your book you cite Paulo Freire’s title of the work indicated where they came
I was at Ocupação 9 de Julho, and there Pedagogy of the Oppressed as a tool for from, I remember that one of them was from
is a space of freedom there, where life unlearning… For Friends, a famous sauna in São Paulo that
is being invented, life in the sense that Yes, I think pedagogy is important because still exists today.”
what we have outside is not life. So for we have to retrain our senses about what These are experimental drawings from this
me, spaces of freedom don’t necessarily we see, how we hear, how we smell, how period, one of which is part of the mam/sp
occur in a museum or a biennale. we change our senses, because we all have collection, and which bears the title Drawing
a strategic education to serve capital. We made with the lef hand by one , curated by
– But at least the document pointed need to say it differently, look differently Aracy Amaral at mam/sp.Mirrors and Shadows
out that there are possibilities… and listen differently. So a pedagogy is in which he wrote the word “faggot” or fagot”
Yes, there are possibilities. But really, what necessary in the sense that relearning, repeatedly. Adriano also exhibited twice at
I want to say is that you need to give people unlearning and learning again is necessary. Galeria Luisa Strina, in 1996 and 1999, and two
the power to actually grab and do whatever We need to listen to each other. In the years before, he was invited to the exhibition
they want. I suggested to a friend in Paris workshop I say there are no stupid ideas. right-handed,
that we do a neighborhood biennale with If an idea is very simple, maybe we can With his master’s degree, it became clearer
people from that neighborhood. We need do it in a different way, or af er a long to him that his interest was in texts and curation.
to start with the people, the neighbors will discussion we conclude that it doesn’t In 1997, when he was still in the United States, he
be the curation team and we will work with work and abandon that idea, but then if we was called by Paulo Herkenhoff, curator of the
them. We may also know the best way to abandon it we know why. It means that it 24th São Paulo Biennial, to be deputy curator.
do this or that, but we can work together. is not the idea that will be most important, Then, he lef Los Angeles, moved to the capital
This would be the type of biennial, all based but the way we decide that needs to be of São Paulo and later became co-curator of
on the residents of a neighborhood. the key to the process the 27th Bienal de São Paulo, 2006, with critic
Lisette Lagnado. Five years later he became the
– At the same time, there is a kind the 60 venice biennial [pages 54 to 56] curator of the Istanbul Biennale, researching
th
of paradox in working with art, since the Arab world. As he comments, he began to
in Ocupação 9 de Julho what they put AND OTHER STORIES circulate internationally, writing for magazines
inside the Reocupa gallery is, in some way, Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the italian such as Frieze e artforum. Amidst so many
conventional art, with frames... exhibition, talks about how he came into art invitations, in 2005 he took over the curatorship
In fact, that’s the debate I’m going to. We of the exhibition Insite, em San Diego (eua) e
were never represented, our voices were by leonor amarante no Centro Cultural de Tijuana (Cecut, México).
not heard, so we will participate, but then Em 2014 vem o convite que o animou de fato,
the model is so hegemonic that we end up the general curator of the 60th ser o diretor artístico do Museu de Arte de
doing what was done before, just showing venice biennale (2024), Adriano Pedrosa São Paulo (Masp).
different things on the wall. In the end we is the first Latin American to assume such Pedrosa assimilates the art system with
don’t know how to do anything different. a position, driven by a trajectory of radical a creative sense, sometimes using the
So this is where I want us to be now: changes. As a young man he studied law and “framework” of other exhibitions, as he puts
what we will do. We want to show some economics, but soon found himself interested it. Now, at the 60th Venice Biennale he chooses
memories and how are we going to do it? If in art and, from there, began his story as an the theme Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners
we are falling back into the Western mode, artist, critic, curator and museum director. Everywhere (foreigners everywhere) , which
that is understandable, af er all we have It all starts when your boyfriend does his alludes to the controversial Panorama da Arte
been doing this work for a while, there will master’s degree in London and he spends Brasileira (mam/sp) of 2009. The event, curated
be some idea from the Western tradition a few months there. “Every day I went to the by him, showed the influence of Brazilian
that we will borrow. But we need to free our National Gallery where I followed thetours of production on works by foreign artists. The
minds from this. I have worked a lot with guided tours lasting one or two hours each. almost unpronounceable title,Mamõyguara
artists and do collective workshops. We The unique experience was the trigger for him opá mamõ pupé, comes from the old Tupi
always notice how quickly we get back to to discover masterpieces, listen to critical and means, precisely, foreigners throughout
normal. So, it is this movement of radical comments and think about art. Over time, this apart, and which now reappears at the Venice
imagination that we have to face now. intimacy with art turns into passion. As there Biennale. The theme was borrowed from the
was no time to waste, he buys books and art work of the collective Claire Fontaine, which
– We have to unlearn… magazines chosen by himself, and charts a consists of neon lights displaying the same
Yes! It’s so hard, you know? At one point, course for his career. text, in different languages.
I did an exercise about what a decolonial Back in Brazil, at the end of the 80s, he A quote from Gramsci warns: “The old world
museum would be like four years ago. The took courses at the Escola de Artes Visuais is dying, a new one is taking time to be born,
answer was: let’s change the text. I said do Parque Lage, in Rio, studying painting and in this light of darkness monsters emerge.”
no, because of course we can bring more with Daniel Senise, Milton Machado, Beatriz I ask Pedrosa if the two current media and
diversity and different texts, but it will Milhazes, Charles Watson and art history genocidal wars, which terrify the planet, will

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