The 36th São Paulo Biennial: A Return to Stillness

Step into the 36th São Paulo Biennial, where stillness is not silence but a pulse, a rhythm, a collective breath.

What does it mean to be human in an age defined by ecological collapse, artificial intelligence, and fractured borders? The artists gathered here do not offer easy answers. Instead, they open portals—toward memory and migration, toward voices carried across oceans, toward futures not yet written.

Curated by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, the Biennial draws inspiration from the flight paths of birds, whose journeys defy boundaries and borders. In the same spirit, the works on view carry songs of resilience, resistance, and renewal, weaving a vast chorus of perspectives.

This year, 125 artists and collectives converge in São Paulo, offering both intimate trajectories and collaborative visions. The gathering reflects a powerful plurality: 50 men and 69 women (a slight female majority of 55%), 32 Black men and 30 Black women (together 26% of the total), and 4 Indigenous voices—making this one of the Biennial’s most resonant assemblies of historically silenced perspectives.

The geography of the Biennial echoes its spirit of migration: Latin America and the Caribbean (25%), Africa (20%), and North America (20%), joined by Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Together, they form a living cartography of today’s world—fragmented yet interconnected, fractured yet fertile with possibility.

Here, art is not spectacle. It is survival. It is archive. It is song.

The Biennial extends an invitation: to pause, to listen, to inhabit stillness as a radical act.

The 36th São Paulo Biennial is not simply an exhibition.

It is a gathering. A crossing. A return.

Photo: Installation view of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – 2025. © Levi Fanan / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo