An art biennial of humanity: the 36th Bienal de São Paulo

The doors of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo 2025, titled Not All Travellers Walk Roads—Of Humanity as Practice, opened to the public just a week ago at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion. Running until January 11th, 2026, this art biennial is already drawing international attention for its ambitious vision of humanity as a living practice shaped by encounters, exchanges, and resistance.

Bienal de São Paulo 2025: a concept rooted in humanity

Led by chief curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung alongside Alya Sebti, Anna Roberta Goetz, Thiago de Paula Souza, Keyna Eleison, and Henriette Gallus, the exhibition takes inspiration from Afro-Brazilian poet Conceição Evaristo’s Da calma e do silêncio (Of Calm and Silence). Conceived as an estuary where diverse currents meet, the show invites visitors to reflect on humanity not as a fixed identity but as a continuous act of negotiation, listening, and coexistence.

Bienal de São Paulo 2025: six chapters of exploration

Since its opening, visitors have been walking through six interconnected chapters:

• Frequencies of Landings and Belongings explores connections to the earth through natural materials like roots, stone, and pigments.
  
• Grammars of Defiances reclaims suppressed histories with installations, sound works, and archival interventions.
  
• Of Spatial Rhythms and Narrations investigates migration, displacement, and urban change through maps, film, and photography.
  
• Currents of Nurturing and Plural Cosmologies highlights alternative systems of care, bringing Indigenous, African, and Asian traditions into dialogue.
  
• Cadences of Transformations presents evolving and kinetic works, some of which will transform over the course of the biennial.
  
• The Intractable Beauty of the World celebrates resilience, showing beauty in reuse, fragmentation, and survival.
  

Together, these chapters feature 125 artistic positions, complemented by an additional five in the Tributaries program at Casa do Povo.

Bienal de São Paulo 2025: artists and global encounters

In its first week, the Bienal has already showcased highlights such as Frank Bowling’s monumental installation of 25 works, marking his Brazilian debut. New commissions by Precious Okoyomon, Theresah Ankomah, Gê Viana, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Andrew Roberts, Emeka Ogboh, Laure Prouvost, and Myriam Omar Awadi have also premiered, emphasizing the show’s global scope. Twenty-eight Brazilian artists are represented, alongside many international participants exhibiting in the country for the first time.

Meanwhile, the Tributaries performance series launched at Casa do Povo, featuring events by Marcelo Evelin, Dorothée Munyaneza, and Mexa. These gatherings underscore the biennial’s commitment to collective practice and cultural resistance.

A new chapter in global art biennials

This year’s art biennial offers more than an exhibition: it stages humanity as a verb, a practice performed through art, care, and collective imagination. As the first visitors have discovered, the 36th Bienal is a crossing of worlds—an invitation to see beauty in transformation and possibility in encounter.