“How to live together”: 27a Bienal de São Paulo and the debate national versus international

Abstract

The text analyzes some elements of the 27^th edition of Bienal de São Paulo, especially its institutional context. As a methodological category for the analysis we use the concept of display, as elaborated by curator and critic Pablo Lafuente, in which it is considered not only the curatorial proposal of an exhibition and its architectural articulation, but all its connected elements such as artworks, texts (wall texts and also labels, catalogs, folders, audio-guides, among others), history and institutional perspective and visitor participation (intended and effective). Although the analysis does not intend to be exhaustive, it seeks to design possibilities of operations on exhibitions studies. As background, it focuses on the notion of national/ versus international, which organizes the editions of the São Paulo Biennial since its founding, in 1951, according to the model propagated by the 19^th  century Universal Exhibitions and in particular by the Venice Biennial (1895), reference for the Brazilian event.