The 36th Bienal de São Paulo Foregrounds the Necessity of Mutual Obligation

<img decoding="async" class="lazyload size-full-width wp-image-1589043" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/Vista-da-instalacao-de-Moffat-Takadiwa-durante-a-36a-Bienal-de-Sao-Paulo-%C3%82%C2%A9-Levi-Fanan_-Fundacao-Bienal-2.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="An installation view shows a monumental wall-like sculpture made from woven discarded plastics and metals in green, black, red, and white patterns, extending across the gallery floor." width="970" height="647" data-caption='Moffat Takadiwa, <em>Portals to Submerged Worlds</em>, 2025. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>© Levi Fanan, courtesy Fundação Bienal de São Paulo</span>’>

In a world marked by financial crises, geopolitical instability and ecological disasters, the 36th Bienal de São Paulo—the second oldest art biennial in the world—clings to the idea that it is too late to be pessimistic. On view through January 11, 2026, at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion in Ibirapuera Park, it brings together works by more than 120 artists under the title “Nem todo viandante anda estradas / Da humanidade como prática” (“Not All Travellers Walk Roads / Of Humanity as Practice”).

Curated by Cameroonian Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, with a conceptual team that included Alya Sebti, Anna Roberta Goetz, Thiago de Paula Souza, Keyna Eleison and Henriette Gallus, the exhibition is structured in six thematic chapters inspired by a verse by Afro-Brazilian poet Conceição Evaristo. The reference is no coincidence, given the numerous artists who recover the ties between Brazil and the Afro-Atlantic diaspora, although the proposal extends to all participants, blurring geographical and political divisions.

For this edition, the curatorial group set out to abandon the logic of traditional categories such as the nation-state and instead conceive the selection of artists as migratory bird routes. From the red-tailed hawk crossing the Americas to the Arctic tern connecting the poles, birds serve as metaphors for cultural movements that overflow borders. “Like them, we carry memories, languages and experiences,” Ndikung explained at the press conference, describing the methodology.

<img decoding="async" class="lazyload size-full-width wp-image-1589042" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/Vista-da-instalacao-de-Wolfgang-Tillmans-durante-a-36a-Bienal-de-Sao-Paulo-%C3%82%C2%A9-Levi-Fanan_-Fundacao-Bienal-2.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="An installation view shows two large photographs—one of a desert landscape with dark river-like lines and one of dense white plants—mounted on a plain gallery wall with a bench in front." width="970" height="647" data-caption='Photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>© Levi Fanan, courtesy Fundação Bienal de São Paulo</span>’>

The pavilion’s façade welcomes visitors with a monumental installation by Theresah Ankomah (Accra, Ghana), made of braided strips of different sizes and colors. Like a community curtain, it completely covers the modernist building designed by Oscar Niemeyer. Inside, the curatorial decision was to build as little as possible, privileging natural light and Niemeyer’s original structures. “The migratory routes of birds freed us from thinking in terms of countries and invited us to explore unexpected connections,” co-curator Anna Roberta Goetz told Observer.

That gesture is also reflected in the materials chosen by many of the artists: plastic bottle caps, computer keyboards, matchboxes, handkerchiefs or scrunchies. “Objects reveal trade routes, ecologies and new forms of colonialism,” Goetz emphasized. An example is the work of Brazilian artist Moisés Patrício, a practitioner of Candomblé, who wraps liturgical objects in hundreds of colorful hair ties. In his Brasilidades series, the piece denounces the symbolic erasure of Black culture from public space and proposes reparation through ancestral knowledge.

<img decoding="async" class="lazyload size-full-width wp-image-1589044" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/Vista-da-instalacao-de-Precious-Okoyomon-durante-a-36a-Bienal-de-Sao-Paulo-%C3%82%C2%A9-Levi-Fanan_-Fundacao-Bienal-4.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="An installation view shows a sloping indoor landscape of soil, rocks, and flowering trees bathed in natural light from surrounding floor-to-ceiling windows." width="970" height="647" data-caption='Precious Okoyomon, <em>Sun of Consciousness. God Blow Thru Me – Love Break Me</em>, 2025. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>© Levi Fanan, courtesy Fundação Bienal de São Paulo</span>’>

On the ground floor, the tour opens with the disturbing garden by Precious Okoyomon (a queer artist of Nigerian origin). Sun of Consciousness. God Blow Thru Me – Love Break Me (2025) is a living landscape of medicinal plants, sugarcane, aromas, sounds and uneven paths, forcing a slower pace and an openness to other rhythms of life. Nearby, Brazilian artist Nádia Taquary presents “Ìrókó: A árvore cósmica,” dedicated to the orisha Ìrókó, who embodies time and ancestry. Bronze female figures stand beside a sacred tree crowned with a white flag, evoking the terreiros of Afro-Brazilian religions.

Wolfgang Tillmans, one of the most celebrated names in this edition, presents a new video installation weaving together fragments of the everyday—mud clinging to a boot, folders in a cabinet, fallen leaves—with a layered soundscape of urban noise, birdsong and electronic beats. The work builds an architecture of images and sounds that unsettles how we consume and share the visual in the digital age.

From Zimbabwe, Moffat Takadiwa transforms post-consumer waste into sculptural textiles critiquing consumerism, racism and environmental collapse. For São Paulo, he created a monumental “textile ark” of discarded plastics and metals, enveloping viewers in a portal to a future rooted in Ubuntu, the African philosophy of redistribution, cooperation and interdependence. Totemic, microorganism-like forms reclaim cast-off materials as symbols of resistance and renewal.

Conceived as a horizontal network of times and geographies, the Bienal insists that the practice of humanity is indispensable in a world marked by migration and inequality. “To be human is to embrace compassion, generosity, resilience and the hospitality of the guest house,” Ndikung said, quoting the Persian poet Rumi.

As visitors leave the Bienal, Chinese artist Song Dong’s Borrow Light (2025) becomes the inevitable selfie spot: a mirrored room, inspired by fairground attractions, that multiplies reflections into infinity. Yet beyond the spectacle, the work gestures toward limitless human connections, reminding us that every encounter is also an act of community. In this playful gesture, visitors find themselves woven into the network of relationships that the Bienal de São Paulo unfolds from beginning to end.

More in art fairs, biennials and triennials

• Hoor Al Qasimi’s Aichi Triennale Confronts Generative and Destructive Extremes

• Observer’s Guide to This Year’s Must-Visit October Art Fairs

• A Curator Comes Home: Helen Nisbet Returns to Scotland to Lead Glasgow’s Biennial

• Art Basel Paris’ Clément Delépine Reflects On How the Fair Tightened Its French Roots and Global Reach 

• Sky High Farm’s Biennial Blends Art, Agriculture and Ecological Urgency