PORTO.- The São Paulo Biennial was initiated in 1951 and is the second oldest art biennial in the world, after the Venice Biennial, which was set up in 1885 and served as its model. The biennial serves to bring Brazilian art closer to an international audience and vice-versa. This is the first time in its more than 60 years history that the São Paulo Biennial travels outside of Brazil.

How to (live with) things that don’t exist features 28 artists and artist collectives selected from the 31st São Paulo Biennial, which was presented in the Oscar Niemeyer designed pavilion in the Ibirapuera Park between 6 September and 7 December 2014. The curatorial selection for Serralves has been made by Charles Esche, Galit Eilat and Oren Sagiv, three of the curators of the São Paulo exhibition.

The exhibition’s investigation into art’s revelatory potential is being reconfigured for the physical, social and cultural context of the city of Porto and Serralves Museum. The selected artworks, from paintings and sculptures to video and installation, distil the ideas of the Brazilian exhibition and focus on how art can alter ways of thinking about the world. Through imagining forms of life and society that are different or do not (yet) exist, the artworks question the authority of religion, history and systems of control and suggest how it could be different. The title of the exhibition is itself in constant change with the mutating verb suggesting some of the many, different ways to experience art as a process of becoming. As well as the works from the Biennial, the presentation at Serralves features a specially curated programme of discussions (the Programme in Time) that will take place in a dedicated area within the exhibition. How to (learn from) things that don't exist also includes an important work by the Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles from the Serralves Collection.

The works of other Brazilian artists are strongly represented in the selection and reveal ways in which the current artistic generation has emerged from the shadow of Tropicalismo and Brazilian modernism. Artists from Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Palestine, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain and Turkey are also featured, as are a number of projects made especially for the Biennial.

Notable works include the powerful wall portraits of Éder Oliveira (1983, Brazil); the video Ymá Nhandehetama by Armando Queiroz (1968, Brazil) that recounts the invisibility of the indigenous people of Brazil in their own country; the river drawings of Anna Boghiguian (1946, Egypt), and the film installation by Virginia de Medeiros (1973, Brazil) address gender issues, religious rituals and spirituality. The transparent mobile of Voluspa Jarpa (1971, Chile) and the video work of Clara Ianni (1987, Brazil) bring together the ghosts from the colonial past and the legacies of dictatorship. Both these histories and the intensity of contemporary urban life are ever present throughout the exhibition. This reimagined Biennale also takes on a more fictional and metaphorical character with installations by Walid Raad (1967, Lebanon), Edward Krasiński (1925─2004, Poland), paintings by Wilhelm Sasnal (1972, Poland) and a dramatic film by Yael Bartana (1970, Israel) imagining the destruction of the Temple of Solomon in São Paulo.

PROGRAMME IN TIME
How to (talk about) things that don’t exist will be complemented by an extensive public programme developed by the Biennial’s team of curators together with the Education Department of the Serralves Museum. This programme will unfold at three major moments and is founded on an exhaustive research carried out by the Biennial’s curators in Porto and Lisbon, where they met with young artists, activists and researchers and visited artist-run spaces, universities and art cooperatives.

The first moment, on the opening day, will analyse the public’s encounter with the artistic project of the São Paulo Biennial. Also, during the weekend immediately after the opening, there will be a symposium entitled ‘A School Under the Tree ― Education, between Imagination and Activism’ featuring educators, artists and activists that will look into the social and community potential of educational processes.

In October, the Museum will host the symposium ‘Reverse Colonialism’ that will deal with relations between Portugal and its former colonies and the contemporary artistic interpretation of the approach to colonial histories, both at the level of art production and institutional development.

In December, the symposium ‘Right to the City ― Criminalisation of the Poor’ will address ways in which it is still possible to exercise the rights of citizenship even in situation of persisting and increasing poverty.

The regular programme of guided visits and workshops at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art will continue alongside these key moments throughout the period of the exhibition, allowing for a continuous activation of the event as a space for discussion and encounter.