The 36th Bienal de São Paulo, titled Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice, will be led by chief curator Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung together with his conceptual team of co-curators Alya Sebti, Anna Roberta Goetz and Thiago de Paula Souza, as well as co-curator at large Keyna Eleison and strategy and communication advisor Henriette Gallus. The exhibition takes its cue from Afrobrazilian poet Conceição Evaristo’s enigmatic poem Da calma e do silêncio [Of calm and silence].
The exhibition is also accompanied by a historic change in the organization of the event, which is traditionally held from September to December. The 36th Bienal will be extended by an additional four weeks, being presented free of charge to the public from September 6, 2025, to January 11, 2026. The decision was made by President Andrea Pinheiro and her Board of Directors to further expand the reach of the exhibition, allowing a larger number of visitors to enjoy it during the school holiday period.
The central proposal of this Bienal is to rethink humanity as a verb, a living practice, in a world that requires reimagining relationships, asymmetries and listening as the basis for coexistence, based on three curatorial fragments/axes. The metaphor of the estuary – a place where different water currents meet and create a space for coexistence – guides the curatorial project, inspired by Brazilian philosophies, landscapes and mythologies. This concept reflects the multiplicity of encounters that have marked Brazil’s history and proposes that humanity comes together and transforms itself through an attentive ear and negotiation between different beings and worlds.
