Collective Laboratory
Bienal 12 has, through its Educational Program , sought to find the appropriate strategies to be together with its audiences in the sensitive ways of the days that we have arrived. If that involves us, how to build pedagogical material for teachers? What does this material need now? What elements cannot be given up? How to bring the different dimensions of thought of a show in times of social isolation? These questions were the driving force behind the action of the Collective Biennial Laboratory 12: educational material in times of isolation. Once again, the show aims to create spaces for listening, dialogue and sharing with teachers, education agents and artists.
During the month of June 2020, we held five meetings, using virtual rooms, with the Chamber of Teachers of the Biennial 12 , representatives of the educators of the institutions that would host the exhibition (Margs, Iberê Camargo Foundation and Centro Histórico Cultural Santa Casa - CHC) and invited educators. Each of these moments was attended by artists from this year's edition of the Bienal, as a way of bringing together different realities and subjects covered, based on thematic axes that cross the artistic productions of these women and our daily lives.
In order to generate more focused debates and propositions, we had to opt for a smaller group dynamic and, therefore, there was no possibility of opening it to the general public. Still, the records of the artists' speeches were recorded for us to share in a virtual way.
Igor Simões , assistant curator of the Bienal 12
Below, we have compiled these moments and the important guiding reflections for the production of educational material:
Women
in Art
Brazilian artist Renata Felinto presents Humanizing Narratives in the Visual Arts: We Are All Artists , reclaiming the practice of visual arts as something that transcends specialization and is inherent to human beings, as an expression of thought. Felinto also addresses the urgency of decolonial actions that incorporate new references and practices in the field of education.
Women's and Democratic Life Group
The Argentine collective Nosotras Proponemos , represented on this occasion by artists Déborah Pruden, Gabriela Golder, Jimena Fuertes, and Soledad Dahbar, discusses their collaboration as a collective and the Permanent Assembly of Women Art Workers. In this regard, they reflect on the public and collective dimensions of an art that is involved in the exercise of democratic life in contemporary Latin America.
Women
and Violence
Argentine artist Fátima Pecci Carou presents a reflection on this axis through her work Algún día saldré de aquí – Femicides (2014-2016), which is part of the 12th Biennial and features portraits of women, transvestites and trans people (children, young people, adults) who were victims of feminicide or who are missing.
Colonialism and Decoloniality
Brazilian artist Aline Motta shares her research that led to the works "Escravos de Jó" (2016) and "(Outros) fundamentos" (Other) fundamentos" (2017-2019). The artist explores the theme of Colonialism and Decolianity extensively, both in the presentation of the counternarrative she created through in-depth research on a children's song, and in her investigation of public and private archives in rural areas of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Portugal, and Sierra Leone, searching for traces of her ancestors.
Trans Visibility in Art and Art History
Brazilian artist Élle de Bernardini discusses the current visibility of trans women in the visual arts in Brazil. She also presents her research for the work TransDialética (2020), which was to be produced for the first time for the physical exhibition at the 12th Biennial , and comments on the issues that led her to recently produce the series of paintings Ensaio para o encontro do Rosa com o Azul (2020).