Ana Roman lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. With a master's degree in Geography from FFLCH-USP, a postgraduate degree in Brazilian Studies from FESP-SP, and a doctoral candidate at FAU-USP, she has worked as a curator, curatorial assistant, and researcher on several exhibitions at important Brazilian cultural institutions, including Rever Augusto de Campos (2016), Between Construction and Appropriation: Antonio Dias, Geraldo de Barros, and Rubens Gerchman in the 1960s (2018), The Night – Mariana Castillo Deball (2022), Essays for the Museum of Origins (2023), and Body-house: dialogues between Carolee Schneemann, Diego Bianchi, and Márcia Falcão (2024), among others. She was assistant curator of the 34th São Paulo Biennial (2021), member of the PIPA Prize Nominating Committee in 2022 and 2024, and curator of Pivô between 2022 and 2023. She is currently content coordinator of the Academia de Curadoria research group, a regular contributor to the Piscina platform, and artistic superintendent of the Tomie Ohtake Institute.
Here—there: MAM São Paulo meets Tomie Ohtake Institute
Here-there, in-between place and otherness in modern art
At many points in history, Brazilian modern art has been intertwined with direct relations with the outside world, in contexts that were decisive for its recognition and national consolidation. We need only recall the exhibitions that marked its supposed beginning: the 1914 exhibition by Lithuanian-Brazilian Lasar Segall, who founded the Dresden Secessionist group in Germany; the 1917 exhibition by Anita Malfatti, after years of study and training in Berlin and New York; and the 1922 Modern Art Week, which included immigrants like the Swiss-Brazilian. john graz and the Italian-Brazilians Victor Brecheret and Zina Aita. We must also consider the intense articulation and interaction between the most modern urban centers of Europe and the United States and the artists, critics, and other agents of Brazilian modernism, which gave rise to institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM São Paulo) and artistic movements such as the Anthropophagic Manifesto and Constructivism.
In the 1940s, after the end of World War II, Ciccillo Matarazzo, founder of MAM São Paulo, built a significant collection of several of the greatest names in the modernist avant-garde through travel, contacts, and widespread circulation in both Europe and North America. To found the museum, Matarazzo—the nephew and heir of an Italian immigrant and industrial magnate from São Paulo—enjoyed the direct collaboration of Nelson Rockefeller, who, as president of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), in New York, established agreements between the two institutions and donated fourteen works to Matarazzo in 1946, as a precursor to the creation of a modern art museum in Brazil. MAM São Paulo was founded two years later, with this donation incorporated into that first collection, which witnessed and brought together major works from a period that still resonates in the history of Brazilian modern art. The first six editions of the São Paulo Biennial, held by MAM, not only enabled the presence of important names in international modern art in Brazil—such as Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, and Alexander Calder—but also fostered an encounter between local audiences and these increasingly global works, which also included the national representations that were included there.
From these encounters, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a highly vibrant artistic environment was cultivated here. This, as in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, placed local production in relation to international issues, but within a dynamic of mutual global relevance. Unlike those initial decades—when artists and critics sought to find forms and images specific to Brazilian identity, affirming it as unique—the encounters established by the Biennials shifted this concern toward a renewal of national production attentive to the latest achievements in international art, without the pretense of asserting itself as different, but rather of integrating the global stage of artistic circulation, which was definitively consolidated in the final decades of the 20th century.
In the field of contemporary art and cultural criticism, the tension between "here" and "there" refers to migration, displacement, and the difficulty of being in two places at once—physically in one country and culturally in another. Some of the artists featured in the exhibition we've featured here have experienced or are experiencing this contradiction. More than that, many share a hybrid identity, encompassing distinct cultural traditions from other physical and symbolic territories. The works in the exhibition, most of which were produced in the late 20th century, evoke spaces that emerged from a series of exchanges and contacts, less due to migration and forced displacement, and more due to travel, artistic residencies, and spontaneous displacement.
While, until the 1950s, Brazilian artists went to Europe or the United States in search of aesthetic renewal and new references, others arrived in Brazil fleeing wars. In the second half of the 20th century, movements abroad occurred more equitably, based on a more decentralized understanding of the world, when Brazilian art had already established itself more independently and looked less outward. This does not mean that the category of Latin American art ceased to be seen as inferior in the major global markets; but, at least since the 1990s, contemporary artistic production, while recognizing its roots and its territorial and cultural ties, is not produced in isolation. In other words, it is possible to be both here and there—to participate in the international art scene without ignoring national historical and geographical factors and without submitting to the hegemonic world.
References to artists and cultures from other nations or groups appear within contemporary works, but this does not weaken the place of speech and the affirmation of local identities, as in the works of Emmanuel Nassar and Lourival Cuquinha, who, in different ways, make significant contributions to the exhibition. While Nassar addresses the uniqueness of the flags of the cities of his home state—installing them on the walls of the exhibition space as a manifesto of identities that, despite being Brazilian, may be unfamiliar to the São Paulo public—Cuquinha presents portraits of street vendors from São Paulo who share a common thread in their lives: they are immigrants, speak other languages, and their informal status highlights the primary negative aspect of any migration—the impossibility of remaining where one naturally belongs.
It's no coincidence that these two works guide the exhibition's core elements: they constitute a kind of backdrop for the exhibition spaces. While, in the first room, Cuquinha's installation incorporates works that incorporate reflections on immigration, diaspora, and physical and symbolic displacements, both inward and outward, in the second room, Nassar's work surrounds others that relate to the affirmation of identities and the tension between bodies.
What is noticeable in the MAM exhibition and collection is that plurality has been valued in art, as well as differences and in-between places, which means that many works resist dilution as they enter the national and international circuit. The "here-there" also addresses the relationship between self and other, that is, alterity. A self only exists in relation to another, and this other cannot be the negation of the self; on the contrary, it is what allows the self to be constituted, what gives it meaning through relational means. Rather than a fixed and essentialist identity, the self is, above all, a relationship, an encounter with the other that could never be reduced to a mere object.
The notion of otherness demands a constant transformation of our self-perceptions, since it is through contact with others, through coexistence with other cultures, that our identities are formed. This means that, inevitably, there is a complicity between self and other as otherness invades the boundaries of the self, the body, and the space we inhabit. For others, my self is also other; my accent, which sounds natural to me, is understood by others as a regional or national characteristic that is not theirs. Contemporary art produced in Brazil in recent decades perhaps has an accent that is not evident, or, rather, a multiplicity of accents that makes it rich and allows for dialogue with others as equals. The artists featured in the exhibition participate in a network in constant movement, built precisely from being here with the echoes of there, and vice versa.
the works of Here-there can be understood as a meeting point, a crossroads, as art makes intersubjectivity possible. Art is the field where the intersections of self and other occur, a place of relationships between here and there. After all, movement and displacement are part of human history. However, in recent times, with the rise of the far right worldwide, the difficulties of physical movement have increased due to anti-immigration policies, sanctioned primarily by hegemonic countries. Everything happens as if physical distancing were the norm, in an era where video calls and social media sell us an idea of proximity and the shortening of distances that is not fully realized.
Cauê Alves and Gabriela Gotoda
Accessibility
- Provision of catalogs in digital version that can be processed by reading and screen magnification systems (click here to access publications);
- Audio guide resources with audio description and video guide in Libras with Portuguese subtitles in the exhibitions;
- Digital Libras tool;
- Use of descriptive captions and alternative text in social media posts, with the hashtag #VideoDescription and hashtag #ForEveryoneToSee;
- Provision of tactile and multisensory materials of works from the collection
In addition to the above measures, it is possible to schedule with the Educational free guided tours with educators for the public deaf, visually impaired, physically or intellectually disabled, and users of mental health equipment and situation of social vulnerability and alternative schedules planned for public service within the Autism Spectrum Disorder according to the distinct characteristics of each subject considered in relation to: socialization, sensoriality, communicability and autonomy. Request by email educational@mam.org.br.
Sign language interpreter and live audio description for activities upon request up to 48 hours in advance, request by email educational@mam.org.br.
In certain activities, additional accessibility measures may be offered, which will be indicated in the promotional materials.
Ana Roman
Cauê Alves
He holds a master's and doctorate in Philosophy from FFLCH-USP. A professor in the Department of Arts at FAFICLA-PUC-SP, he is the chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo and coordinator of the research group in Art History, Criticism and Curatorship (CNPq). He has published numerous texts on art, including in the catalog. Schendel sight (Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Pinacoteca de São Paulo and Tate Modern, 2013). He was chief curator of the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture and Ecology (MuBE, 2016-2020), assistant curator of the Brazilian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and adjunct curator of the 8th Mercosur Biennial (2011).
Gabriela Gotoda
Gabriela Gotoda is a researcher and curator of visual arts. With a bachelor's degree in Art: History, Criticism, and Curatorship from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, she has published biographical texts on Edgar Degas (MASP, 2021), John Graz (Pinacoteca de São Paulo, 2021), and Ozias (Danielian, 2024). She has worked with curatorship and editorial processes in art institutions and galleries in São Paulo since 2019. She has been a member of the curatorial team of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo since 2022, where she is responsible for the curatorial oversight of the museum's publications and the curation of the exhibitions "Lina Bo Bardi and MAM in the Park" (2023), "MAM São Paulo Collectors' Club: Techniques of Fun in Contemporary Art" (2024), and "MAM São Paulo: Encounters between the Modern and the Contemporary" (2025).
Paulo Miyada
A curator and researcher of contemporary art, he dedicates himself to projects that contribute both to broader and more precise perspectives on art history and to critical and desiring reflection on the present. Committed to dialogue with artists, he equally values the maturation of institutions as bodies of public and social relevance, as well as the acceptance of audiences as sensitive and thoughtful individuals with interests that transcend value judgment. With a bachelor's and master's degree from FAU-USP, he currently serves as artistic director of the Tomie Ohtake Institute and adjunct curator at the Centre Pompidou. He was adjunct curator of the 34th São Paulo Biennial (2020-21) and assistant curator of the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), in addition to having edited the book "São Paulo Biennial Since 1951" (2022). His curatorial works include "AI-5 50 Years – It Hasn't Finished Finishing Yet" (2018); “Anna Maria Maiolino – PSSSIIIUUU…” (2022); “Essays for the Museum of Origins” (2023); “Mira Schendel – Waiting for the Word to Form” (2024); and “Sonia Gomes – Baroque, Even” (2025). Her publications have been nominated several times for the Jabuti Award, including the award in the Art Book category in 2020. She is currently organizing the exhibition “EARTH, FIRE, WATER AND WINDS – For a Museum of Wandering with Édouard Glissant.”
Anna Bella Geiger
Carla Zaccagnini
Emmanuel Nassar
Hudinilson Júnior
Ivens Machado
Judith Lauand
León Ferrari
Lívio Abramo
Lothar Charoux
Lourival Cuquinha
Lydia Okumura
Madalena Schwartz
Maureen Bisilliat
Megumi Yuasa
Nazareth Pacheco
Paulo Bruscky
Rafael França
| Exposure: | Here — there: MAM São Paulo meets Instituto Tomie Ohtake |
| Location: | Tomie Ohtake Institute |
| Curatorship: | Ana Roman, Cauê Alves, Gabriela Gotoda and Paulo Miyada |
| Exhibition period: | from September 3rd to November 2nd, 2025 |
| Address: | Coropés Street, 88 – Pinheiros – São Paulo – SP |
| Free entry |