The city of Belém, capital of Pará and gateway to the Brazilian Amazon, is also, this year, the global capital of the climate, as it hosts COP30, the UN conference on climate change, in November. With the eyes of the world turned towards it, the city is also hosting the 2nd edition of the Bienal das Amazônias, which brings together 74 artists and collectives from eight pan-Amazonian and Caribbean countries showing their work until 30 November.
Opened on 27 August, at the Centro Cultural Bienal das Amazônias, in the historic centre of the capital of Pará, the young biennial is already regarded as one of the most significant contemporary art events in the country and in the Global South, shifting the art world's attention beyond the dominant cultural axes.
The general curatorship is by the Ecuadorian Manuela Moscoso, based in Brazil, who relies on a collaborative structure, with the Colombian Sara Garzón as associate curator, Jean da Silva, from Pará, in charge of the public programme and the Mexican Mónica Amieva in charge of the educational curatorship. Together, they form an international team that broadens the dialogues and the experimental dimension of the event.
The conception and coordination of the Biennial are the work of Lívia Condurú who, in a statement to the magazine Arte!Brasileiros, said that she sees the Bienal das Amazônias as an active voice at this moment when COP 30 is approaching. For her, the Amazon cannot be treated merely as a backdrop for climate debates, but needs to be seen as a living, political and cultural territory. “Here we discuss mining, oil, extractivism, but we also invent ways out. We believe in micropolitics, in small collective actions that, added together, become weapons of resistance. The Biennial gives visibility to that”.
The programme and all the information about the Bienal das Amazônias are on the event's website, which you can find here.
