Brazilian Contemporary Art in the Global Biennial Context, 1998-2020

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The 1990s and 2000s saw rapid worldwide growth in the number of large-scale, biennial exhibitions of contemporary art. While the biennial model took root within formerly peripheral locations, longestablished Western biennials also pursued a more geographically expansive perspective. Focusing on the representation of Brazilian art within key biennials 1998- 2020, this project asks how the expansion and diversification of the biennial model have impacted knowledge and understanding of the contemporary art of formerly peripheral nations.Recent decades have seen increased scholarly interest in the biennial model (Filipovic 2010; Kompatsiaris 2017; Altshuler 2013) and its history (Gardner & Green 2016; Jones 2016; Vogel 2010). The impact of globalisation on art history has also been extensively addressed (Iskin 2017; Elkins 2007; Belting, 2013). The internationalisation of Brazilian art has been widely analysed within Euro-American museum exhibitions (Fialho 2005; Spricigo 2010). No existing studies, however, address the role played by biennials in shaping an understanding of contemporary art from nations, such as Brazil, previously excluded from dominant Western-US narratives.By selecting artists deemed worthy of international recognition (Zacarias and Spricigo, 2021) biennials play a role in establishing the formal, conceptual and geographical boundaries of contemporary art and its history. Since the 1990s, the biennial field has introduced new genealogies of contemporary art into mainstream knowledge, contributing to a wider post-global epistemological shift (Marchart 2014; Hoskote 2010; Kompatsiaris 2017). When formerly marginalised nations are repeatedly represented by a limited number of artists, however, biennials may also produce homogenised perspectives (Ott 2015; Lee 2012) and perpetuate exoticizing discourses (Asbury 2017).Within this debate, the 24th São Paulo Biennial (1998) is widely celebrated as a positive example: an internationally facing, Brazilian sited, biennial that 'remade art history from a Brazilian perspective' (Lagnado, 2015). Using the Brazilian modernist theory of anthropophagy (which views Brazilian art as an active appropriation of Western culture) as its framework, this biennial contrasted Brazilian works with historical Western pieces and adopted a postcolonial perspective toward contextualising Brazil within the canon. This isolated case has been assumed as impactful in itself and has not previously been treated as part of the wider phenomenon my project addresses, namely how successive international biennials jointly shape the dimensions of contemporary Brazilian art and its history.This project thus approaches the 24th São Paulo Biennial in relation to subsequent biennials which contributed contrasting understandings. Whereas the biennials of Liverpool (1999) and Venice (2001; 2003; 2009) limited their approach to conceptions of Brazilianness, those of Havana (2003; 2012) and Berlin (2020) diminished distinctions between national art practices by emphasising discourses of globalisation. Grounded by archival research and interviews, my analysis of how these biennials have shaped Brazilian contemporary art and its history will be framed by theories of cultural identity articulated by Bhabha (1994), Canclini (1995) and Hall (1996). By exploring the biennial as a site where knowledge about contemporary art and its history is produced, this project will provide a model applicable to other previously marginalised countries.