SESSION: South American Biennials: Dispositifs of Resistance and Diplomacy
This session explores South American biennials as underexamined dispositifs of aesthetic and political agency, with particular attention to their emergence, genealogy, and resonance beyond dominant Euro-American exhibition paradigms. Events such as the São Paulo Bienal, the Bienal de La Habana, the Cuenca Bienal, the Bienal de Mercosur, and the historical biennials in Chile, such as the Bienal Americana de Grabado, Bienal de Valparaiso and the experimental Triennal de Chile in 2009 have historically functioned as platforms for regional articulations of modernity, postcolonial identity, and international solidarity. Biennials from the 1960s to the 1980s were shaped by Cold War cultural diplomacy, those of the 1990s by neoliberal transitions and more recent editions by the reactivation of anti-colonial imaginaries of contemporaneity.
The contributions interrogate the biennial as a dispositive of cultural diplomacy, curatorial experimentation and geopolitical asymmetries, examine curatorial models, archive-based research, alternative institutional genealogies, feminist or decolonial critiques, or the effects of these exhibitions on contemporary art ecosystems.
The session aims to foster dialogue between academic researchers and curators and to foreground a Latin American perspective in biennial histories.
By challenging the canonical cartography of art history, this session contributes to a more plural understanding of contemporary exhibition practices and their political implications in times of global crisis, cultural precarity and democratic erosion.
Session Convenor:
Mariagrazia Muscatello, Uniacc, University for the Arts, Sciences, and Communication.
Session Speakers:
Mariagrazia Muscatello: Uniacc, University for the Arts, Sciences, and Communication.
Chilean Biennials and the Configuration of the Artistic Field during the Cold War
This article analyzes two Chilean biennials developed during the Cold War—the Bienal Americana de Grabado (1963–1970) and the Bienal Internacional de Arte de Valparaíso (1973–1997)—in order to examine the formation of cultural and political networks that shaped differentiated aesthetic horizons within the regional artistic field. The study explores how these biennials operated as institutional and cultural dispositifs, closely connected to specific historical contexts, such as the Alliance for Progress promoted by the Kennedy administration, the university reform movement, and the cultural project of the Unidad Popular (1968–1973), as well as the repressive scenario established by Operation Condor (1975–1989). The article proposes a historiographical distinction between Pan-Americanism, Latin Americanism, and Ibero-Americanism, understood not merely as geographical categories but as competing cultural and political models. From this perspective, Chilean biennials are analyzed as spaces of tension between institutional structures, artistic canons, and political conflict, contributing to a critical reading of Latin American art historiography.
Maria de Fátima Morethy Couto, Full Professor, Unicamp
The Córdoba Biennial in Context: South American Art Networks and Brazil’s 1962 All-Female Artists’ Delegation
The Bienal Americana de Arte, better known as the Córdoba Biennial, was held in Argentina’s second-largest city across three editions between 1962 and 1966. Aiming to foster regional artistic exchange, it invited participation exclusively from Latin American countries. However, the Biennial also reflected the interests of its corporate sponsor, Industrias Kaiser Argentina (IKA)—a U.S.-based automotive multinational that expanded rapidly in Argentina from 1956 until its acquisition by Renault in 1967.
The Biennial emerged from the success of the Salones Nacionales de Arte, previously promoted by IKA. Modelled after the São Paulo Biennial, it replicated its format by inviting selected countries, organizing national representations, appointing renowned jurors, and awarding a Grand Prize alongside acquisition prizes to build the IKA art collection. The event revitalized Córdoba’s local art scene through parallel exhibitions, lectures, and debates. In 1966, it also hosted the First American Conference on Experimental Music.
This presentation explores the Biennial’s broader goals, with a particular focus on Brazil’s participation in its second edition. Organized by art critic Geraldo Ferraz, the Brazilian delegation consisted exclusively of twelve women artists, most of whom were abstract painters and printmakers already recognized in Brazil. On that occasion, Wega Nery received the prize awarded by the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Documents consulted at the Getty Research Institute reveal that the organizers deemed the Brazilian selection lacking in quality. As a result, no Brazilian artists were included in Twenty South American Artists, a travelling exhibition that emerged from the Biennial and toured Mexico City and several U.S. cities.
Anita Orzes, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History
Cold Biennials: Art and Politics in Latin America during the 1970s
This paper examines the role of Latin American biennials during the 1970s as platforms for enunciation, protest and resistance in the context of the Cold War. This decade has received comparatively little scholarly attention, with most research concentrating on adjacent periods, analyzing these exhibitions either within the framework of Pan-American political programs or through the lens of neoliberalism and globalization.
However, the 1970s also witnessed a pronounced politicization of Latin American biennials, during which these exhibitions reflected (and were crossed by) geopolitical tensions, ideological positions and identity stances. This is evidenced by artworks, projects and counter-events such as the political prints presented at the First Cali Biennial (1971), the protests during the opening of the Second Coltejer Art Biennial, the Exposición de Gráfica Combativa during the Third San Juan Biennial (1974) and the Latin American turn of the São Paulo Biennial (1978).
Through the analysis of specific editions of these biennials, this paper explores how these exhibitions functioned as dispositifs of affirmation, dispute and resistance within the local and global realities of the 1970s. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that integrates exhibition history with global art history and the social and political sciences, the investigation seeks to highlight the intense politicization of Latin American biennials during the Cold War, as well as their pivotal role in the cultural and artistic history of the region.
Juliana Caffé, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP)
I Havana Biennial (1984) as a Dispositif of Resistance and Cultural Diplomacy in Latin America (Online)
This paper examines the First Havana Biennial (1984) as a pivotal dispositif of resistance and cultural diplomacy in Latin America during the Cold War. Conceived by the Cuban government at a moment when Fidel Castro had lost leadership among the Non-Aligned countries, the Biennial was established together with the Centro Wifredo Lam as part of a broader cultural policy aimed at strengthening Latin American and Caribbean artistic exchanges. As the only edition exclusively dedicated to Latin American and Caribbean artists, it sought to challenge Euro-American exhibition paradigms by fostering South–South networks and redefining the notion of “Latin American identity” within a postcolonial framework. Drawing from archival research, interviews, and curatorial documents, this study analyzes the political and aesthetic strategies mobilized by the Biennial’s organizers to construct an alternative cartography of art and solidarity across the Global South. By situating the Havana Biennial within broader networks of biennial-making in São Paulo, Valparaíso, and Cuenca, the paper argues that it operated simultaneously as an act of resistance to cultural imperialism and as a platform for new diplomatic imaginaries in art. The discussion contributes to a deeper understanding of biennials as geopolitical and aesthetic instruments of negotiation, continuity, and dissent in the history of exhibition practices in Latin America.
Gabriela Saenger Silva, Liverpool John Mooore University
The Pedagogical Biennial: Examining Bienal do Mercosul (Mercosul Biennial)
This contribution proposes revisiting the Bienal do Mercosul (Mercosul Biennial) as a pedagogical biennial. It delves into the idea of the biennial as a curatorial dispositif whose very form operated pedagogically.
Between its 6th and 9th editions (2007–2013), the Biennial reimagined itself as a space for learning, dialogue, and experimentation, positioning education not as support but as the structural logic of its existence. Drawing on my involvement in the project and subsequent academic research, I view this period as a living study of how a biennial can learn and how its temporality, social structure, and relational ethos become formative.
Framed through a poetic understanding of the dispositif (Foucault) and drawing on ideas about experience and learning from Freire, Rancière, and Larrosa Bondía, this presentation unfolds as a performative reflection on practice and memory. It narrates, amongst other memories, the experience of Casa M (2011), an initiative designed to be overtaken and transformed by artists and communities, and considers it a moment where pedagogy, politics, and affection intersected as a method.
Presented through voice and images, the lecture traces how Mercosul’s experiment diverged from both Euro-American and Latin American biennial paradigms, becoming, in its subtle way, a “resistance within resistance.” It proposes that such histories cannot be fully found in archives or catalogues, but are expressed through embodied, situated, and pedagogical memory. By activating an autotheoretical lens, the work reclaims the pedagogical as an aesthetic and institutional form of thinking otherwise.