Born in Serra dos Carajás (PA), Germano Dushá He is a curator, writer, critic and cultural agent. Graduated in Law (FGV-SP) and postgraduate in Art: Criticism and Curation (PUC-SP), he lives and works in São Paulo. His research brings together aesthetics, criticism and esoteric traditions, and his practice takes multiple forms — in curatorial, literary and hypermedia experiments — to investigate social imaginaries, and the energy linked to radical subjective experiences and processes of transmutation. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with institutions, galleries and publications in different countries. Among the most recent exhibitions he curated are Frontal Sphinx, from Galeria Mendes Wood DM (São Paulo) and Bends but does not break, by Almeida & Dale (São Paulo), both from 2023; Universal Heat, at Pace Gallery (Hamptons) and Every other week, from Casa Zalszupin (São Paulo) in 2022; It is The Unstable Hour, at Bruno Múrias (Lisbon), in 2019. He is currently coordinator of Fora, a multidisciplinary organization founded in 2018 that works with cultural projects and institutional strategies.
Entitled Mil Graus [A Thousand Degrees], this edition of the Panorama of Brazilian Art critically elaborates on the current reality of the country through the concept of limit-heat—a temperature at which everything transforms. The project seeks to outline a multidimensional horizon of contemporary Brazilian artistic production, establishing points of contact and contrast between various research and practices that, in common, share a high energetic intensity. By bringing together artists and other agents addressing ecological, historical, sociopolitical, technological, and spiritual issues, the exhibition catalyzes memory and public debate. The set of works circumvents the limits of language and its preestablished meanings, revealing universal signs through regional gestures and accents. The idea of a temperature opposite to absolute zero—that is, an absolute hot—highlights this Panorama’s interest in radical experiences, extreme conditions—whether climatic or metaphysical —and transient states—of both matter and soul—that confront us with transmutation as an inevitable destiny.
A série Panorama of Brazilian Art, started in 1969, is a milestone in the history of exhibitions. The first Panorama of Brazilian Art coincides with the installation of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM) at its headquarters, on the Ibirapuera Park marquee. With the start of the marquee renovation in 2024, MAM temporarily left its headquarters and is expected to return in early 2025. The calendar and all of MAM's activities were maintained thanks to the support and hospitality of partner institutions that have historical ties to the museum, such as the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, which welcomed part of its team, and the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC USP), which, in addition to providing space for collaborators, hosts the 38th Panorama of Brazilian Art.
Developed by the curators Germano Dushá, Thiago de Paula Souza e Ariana Nuala, the project of the 38th Panorama of Brazilian Art: A thousand degrees is part of a colloquial expression that has multiple meanings, but always with the sense of high intensity. The exhibition points to conditions marked by heat, melting and drastic changes in any existing matter. In this edition, the contemporary world is observed from extreme conditions, both in the sense of historical and sociopolitical issues, as well as in relation to ecological and technological discussions.
MAM has established partnerships with institutions in the cultural hub of Ibirapuera Park. Carrying out the 38th Panorama of Brazilian Art at MAC USP, in addition to a historic rapprochement between the two institutions, it is a moment of integration and combined efforts for the benefit of art and its audiences. MAM thanks MAC USP for its receptiveness.
Elizabeth Machado
President of the Board of Directors of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo
Caue Alves
Chief Curator of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo
It is with great pleasure that the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP) opens its doors to 38th Panorama of Brazilian Art, carried out by the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM).
MAC USP is a public museum created in 1963 and, since then, has been dedicated to preserving, exhibiting and updating a rich collection of works of art from Brazil and abroad. As a university museum, its teaching, research and outreach activities anchor a critical and formative intervention that is attentive to debates on modern and contemporary art. As such, we could not fail to welcome this partner institution in so many museological and curatorial initiatives to our headquarters. In recent decades, the Panorama has become a fundamental space for recognizing and problematizing current trends in art in Brazil. Contributing to maintaining its regularity, at this time of renovations at the MAM headquarters, on the Ibirapuera marquee, is also an opportunity for us to engage in dialogue with the proposals and productions gathered in this edition of the exhibition, on the 3rd floor of the building, in addition to some works and interventions on the ground floor.
We would like to take this opportunity to invite the public to also visit the MAC USP exhibitions currently on display: Fractured Times (6th and 7th floors); Circumambulatio: Anna Bella Geiger e Sacilotto Contemporary: color, movement, sharing (5th floor); Graphic Experiments: Donation from the Ivani and Jorge Yunes Collection e Research Gallery: Aspects of the Terra Foundation for American Art Collection (4th floor) and Open Collection (in the attachment).
Enjoy your visit!
Jose Tavares
Director of MAC USP
Esther Imperio Hamburger
Vice-Director of MAC USP
Germano Dushá
Thiago de Paula Souza
Ariana Nuala
Adriano Amaral
Advânio Lessa
Ana Clara Tito
Antonio Tarsis
Davi Pontes
Dona Romana
Frederico Filippi
Gabriel Massan
Ivan Campos
Jayme Fygura
Jonas Van & Juno B
José Adário dos Santos
Joseca Mokahesi Yanomami
Labô Young
Rafaela Kennedy
Lais Amaral
Lucas Arruda
Marcus Deusdedit
Maria Lira Marques
Marina Woisky
Marlene Almeida
Melissa de Oliveira
Mestre Nado
MEXA
Noara Quintana
Paulo Nimer Pjota
Paulo Pires de Oliveira
Rafael RG
Rebeca Carapiá
Rop Cateh – Alma pintada em Terra de Encantaria dos Akroá Gamella
Sallisa Rosa
Solange Pessoa
Tropa do Guriloko
Zahỳ
Zimar
interview carried out by the MAM São Paulo Communications team with the curators of the 38th Panorama of Brazilian Art: A thousand degrees about the list of artists in the exhibition.
MAM Communication: How did the artist selection process go?
Curated by 38th Panorama: Although long, the selection process was not very complicated, probably due to our affinities and the collective understanding we have about the project. When the exhibition opens in October, two years will have passed from the embryonic idea and the first conversations to the final project. Part of the list is made up of artists or collectives that we had worked with before or were interested in developing a project together. Several others are the result of research specifically focused on 1000°. In the end, they are artists that we think about, but also feel and intuit, who carry a certain energy that has everything to do with the fundamentals and vision of the project. They are artists whose practices represent and embody the sense of urgency that we want to address.
A less conceptual criterion was the decision to focus on living, active artists, privileging people who did not participate in the São Paulo Biennale or were not in previous editions of Panorama.
CM: How does this group of artists outline what the current “Panorama of Brazilian Art” is?
CP: Just like other curators that came before us, we know that drawing a “Panorama of Brazilian art” is an impossible task from the outset. It would be very presumptuous to imagine that an exhibition of contemporary art, especially given the limits of time, space, resources, etc. and the goals of the project itself (concept, themes, etc.), it could handle the size of a continental country, with deep social and cultural complexities, like Brazil. Our curatorial project took this into consideration and we accepted the fact that our perspectives would never be able to cover the multiplicity of artistic practices emerging in the country at this time.
With this in mind, we sought to compose a list of artists that was as plural and intersectional as possible. It was an exercise that sought to constantly expand perspectives. The project will be a provisional reading of what we understand as a portrait of a cultural panorama and the Brazilian artistic scene in light of the concepts we chose to base the project. And of course, knowing that any choices of this type always imply countless absences, and that there are many other possible paths and approaches to pursue this.
That said, amid all this plurality, it will be possible to find a shared energy, some common directions and certain zones of interest: there are several artists working with raw organic matter and telluric elements; that relate directly or indirectly to the spiritual dimension and esoteric practices; there is the presence of the body and the erotic in a direct relationship with urban flows and risks; and also an expanded ecological vision that understands the interconnectivity of everything, and goes far beyond false dichotomies such as nature and culture, natural and artificial, organic and technological.
CM: The curatorial party indicates the desire to work with artists from different generations, media and birthplaces. Can you talk a little about why this is important to the project?
CP: The desire to propose a dialogue that is as broad and diverse as possible is at the genesis of the project. Our list is made up of artists from all regions and 16 states in Brazil, there is a significant number of people born in the 40s, and then there are several other generations, until we reach others born in the late 1990s and even 2000. The same can be said about the desire to work with different contexts, research and practices. And, naturally, with different languages and ways of thinking and making art. The idea of a certain urgency, of a maximum temperature, of extreme situations and of transformation as an inescapable destiny then functions as a common basis, on which we would like to experiment from many perspectives.
CM: And in relation to artistic techniques and processes, how does this diversity occur, from clay to new technologies?
CP: The diversity of media and languages is a final reflection of this plurality that guided the formulation of the project. In this sense, we will have artists who work with organic materials and traditional media, some with spontaneous practices linked to traditional knowledge and others more linked to academic training, even artists who are on the fringes of experimentation with new media, technologies that are unconventional to the artistic circuit. , digital resources and images, industrial equipment and artificial materials.
The curatorial project respects and calls for a warm dialogue — in a non-condescending way — the centuries-old matrices of thought and ways of doing things while bringing experiments with new technologies, urban scenarios and elaborations of futures. The idea is to establish a certain energetic cohesion through the encounter between differences, flexing rigid notions about space and time, and experimenting with how things can connect and coexist in non-linear ways. We are interested in reflecting on whether — and how — artists from such disparate contexts, with such different practices, can approach the same energetic vibration. And not to have a totalizing and overwhelming vision of things, on the contrary: to understand equality in difference, and the many, and always renewed, ways of elaborating reality, exercising imagination, making art, living together, etc.
CM: Dona Romana is best known as a spiritual leader and not as an artist. How do you understand this and how important is her figure in this Panorama?
CP: The spiritual dimension, not only in its religious sense, but also as a way of understanding the relationships between the different beings that inhabit our world, is one of the fundamental axes of the project, and we are interested in reflecting on the intertwining between esoteric practices and artistic making. There are artists who deal with this in a more indirect way, in whom we see this dimension even if it is in a veiled way, and others who are in fact priests or perform a properly spiritual function.
Dona Romana de Natividade, or Mãe Romana as she is also called, does not see herself as an artist. She is a person who has received a spiritual mission and whose practice involves creations in sculpture, drawing and painting. It is natural that there is an aesthetic interest in the quality of her work, which not only carries a deep vital charge given its mystical and religious nature, but also has great formal and visual power. However, her works cannot even leave the place where they are, due to spiritual anchoring. Still, we decided to insist on her participation, even if through visual or written documentation. She has been a central figure in the development of the project, so her participation is both a reverence and a way of bringing the unique strength of her creation to the foundation of the exhibition.
CM: In addition to Dona Romana, we also have other names that carry a certain “master” aura, such as Mestre Zimar, Maria Lira Marques, José Adário dos Santos and Mestre Nado. Tell us a little about their presence in this set.
CP: They are figures of great stature, with profound work, who have dedicated themselves to their works for many decades. Naturally, they are people who guide our thinking and support the formulation of the project. These artists are truly pillars of strength, supporting the project through the vitality of their works and all the aura that surrounds them. At the same time, their presence in a Panorama is an opportunity to create complex dialogues with younger people and very different practices, which naturally reaffirms the importance of their works, since alongside emerging practices their works shine with freshness and show themselves irrefutably current. There is a process that interests us as well, which is that of tensioning categories of art that fix these artists in a single point. Many of them end up on the edge of what was once called 'popular art', which is also a fiction and nomenclature that we are not interested in and we refuse. It is important for us to be aware of differences, we are interested in combating atavistic readings so that each artistic work has its field of force within the same magnetism, without necessarily being positioned in a certain category due to racial and class markers.
CM: The artist Gê Viana participated in the 36th Panorama and is now back in a collaborative project with Thiago Martins de Melo and Território/Povo/Comunidade Akroá Gamella. Tell us a little about the difference between the work she exhibited in 2019 and the work that will be done now, and why bring her back to Panorama.
CP: In this case, we consider the territory or community Akroá Gamella, which is located in the Maranhão lowlands, as a participant. The community's participation, under the name “Rop Cateh – Soul painted in Terra de Encantaria by Akroá Gamella, will involve works by Gê Viana and Thiago Martins de Melo, artists who have already participated, respectively, in another Panorama and the Bienal de São Paulo. They are artists who are very connected with the curatorial vision, and who have previous experiences with the Akroá Gamella community. In 2019, Gê focused his work on the history of Capelobo, a Maranhão entity that is half people, half animal, and created images based on self-portraits that suggest inverting a logic of domination. For this edition that we are creating, we still don't know what it will be like, but the idea is that it will bring the foundations of your practice, which involves research into archives and relational practices. Understanding that the territory has a documentary memory based on records, whether maps, writings or photographic images, made by non-indigenous people and which often do not match the history that reflects the community itself in its oral, gestural and also documentary, created with its own science and guidelines. At this point, both Gê and Thiago can add to the Gamella presentation, which may involve photographs, drawings, objects, etc. as well as works by these two artists connected to experiences and relationships with the community and the territory.
CM: Jayme Fygura is the only deceased artist on the list. Will his presence at the exhibition be a kind of tribute? What is his role in this Panorama?
CP: Jayme Fygura's case is the only exception, as his name was present from the beginning of the project. He is someone we have followed for a long time and with whom we have worked before, and his passing took place a few months before the list was defined, that is, in the middle of our process. Therefore, we believe it would be fair to keep him, as a tribute, but above all because he is an emblematic artist for the curatorial north, fundamental to our thinking in this project, and whose trajectory and work are deeply connected with many of the subjects we want to address. And he is a unique artist, with a powerful work, and who did not receive nearly the recognition he was due during his lifetime.
CM: There are artists on the list who are little known in the arts circuit, such as MEXA, Melissa de Oliveira and Zimar. How did you meet them and how long have you been following them?
CP: In fact, they are artists who already circulate a lot through certain channels, despite not being at the core of the contemporary art system, so to speak. They are artists that we have been following for some time, some are closer, with whom we have worked a few times, and others that appeared in our research and we decided to face the risks of a first collaboration. We believe that bringing artists who are not yet present in the system is a fundamental part of a Panorama, as it allows new energies to enter a greater debate, while offering the public, even those who are regulars in the arts system, the opportunity to learn about new practices.
CM: At the same time, we have a very celebrated artist, Solange Pessoa. Tell us a little about her inclusion in this Panorama.
CP: The breadth of this spectrum — artists who still have little visibility on the circuit, and more notorious and celebrated names — reveals the project's desire to combine different trajectories. The case of Solange Pessoa is quite specific, as she is an artist who participated in major exhibitions around the world, but never received the proper institutional reception here in Brazil, so she never participated in a Biennale or a Panorama. In this sense, for us it is a tremendous opportunity to include her, both due to the greatness of her work, as well as the deep connection with the conceptual and formal foundations of the project, and the relationships that her work establishes, in different ways, with many of the other artists.
CM: The work of artists like Jonas Van & Juno B. and Gabriel Massan has something futuristic about it. Talk a little about this aspect in Panorama.
CP: There is an important aspect in our project which is the desire to create a cross-section of Brazil's social imaginary in the 21st century: a country that is intensely online, immersed in a cybernetic culture, whose digital invention is formulated in a vibrant way on the networks and also on the streets , in art, fashion, music, etc. From the beginning we knew that we wanted to work with artists who create imagery through the use of new technologies and image production methods. This also means that we want to look at who is producing and pushing the limits of a discussion that never ends: the relationship between art and technology, especially if they also offer perspectives that expand the parameters established by the Global North. If ideas about the future permeate the transformation between knowledge, and are often linked to a more blurred and curved temporality than we are conditioned to perceive, we can also consider that the works of artists such as Zimar or Advânio Lessa, or even the project of Akroá Gamella Community also outline perspectives of possible futures.
about expanding the curatorial team
CM: How did Ariana Nuala join the curatorial team for this Panorama and what will her contribution be?
CP: Ariana Nuala is someone we had already worked with individually and had been in dialogue with for a while. At the same time that she has a background linked to independent organizations, she also accumulates institutional experiences, and in recent years she has also traveled through different regions of Brazil, and we know that she closely follows many artists and movements that interest us. At some point we thought that having a third look from someone we trusted and who could add other experiences and perspectives would be important, and her name was the first one that came to us. It proved to be a happy choice, as we feel that we have reached a good balance between our visions and desires. Her contribution has been of utmost importance and, broadly speaking, will influence all aspects of the project, as she actively worked to define most of the list of artists, and will now support us in monitoring the creation processes of the works, in expographic thinking, in the preparation of texts, in the editorial organization of publications, and in other aspects of the exhibition.
MAM presents its first original podcast: the audio series “Mil Graus”.
The podcast was named after the exhibition, XNUMXº [A thousand degrees], and brings the idea of a limit heat, a concept proposed by the curators of 38th Panorama to refer to a temperature at which everything melts, breaks down and transforms.
The series is a way to deepen and expand essential discussions about the exhibition. Over the course of six episodes, listeners can learn more about the 38th Panorama of MAM, as well as stories and curiosities about some of the collectives and artists participating in the exhibition.
the podcast XNUMXº [A thousand degrees] is available on the main players: Spotify, Deezer, Apple Podcast and YouTube.
Data sheet:
Mil Graus is an original podcast from the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, sponsored by Nubank and EMS through the Federal Law of Incentive to Culture, Ministry of Culture, Federal Government, Brazil Union and Reconstruction
Direction and executive production: Thunder Media
Conception: Ane Tavares, Ariana Nuala, Germano Dusha and Thiago de Paula Souza
Presentation: Adriana Couto
Research and script: Flavia Martin
Sound editing, mixing and assembly: Pedro Vituri
Original Soundtrack: Joseph Hesse
Visual identity: Raul Luna
Design: Paulo Macedo
click here and listen on Deezer
click here and listen on Apple Podcast
38th Panorama of Brazilian Art: A thousand degrees
| Curatorship: | Germano Dushá, Thiago de Paula Souza |
| Deputy curator: | Ariana Nuala |
| Exhibition period: | October 05, 2024 to January 26, 2025 |
| Location: | Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo (MAC USP), third floor |
| Address: | Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral, 1301 |
| Opening Hours | Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 21pm |
| Tickets: | free entrance |
| Parental rating: | 10 years |