In the evening of October 10, the Award Jury of the 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil | Southern Panoramas, composed of Hoor Al-Qasimi (UAE), N’Goné Fall (Senegal), Priscila Arantes (Brazil), Till Fellrath (Switzerland) and Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy (Mexico), announced this edition’s eleven winning artists and three honorable mentions, chosen from the 53 artists shortlisted following a call for submissions:
GRAND PRIZE: Hui Tao, China
Talk about body, 2013, video
The winner of the Grand Prize of BRL 75,000 was Hui Tao (China), for his video Talk about body (2013). It discusses the coexistence of different times and cultures, urban and rural settings, and traditions and progresses that grow outdated and reinvent themselves. Sitting on his bed, dressed like a Muslim woman, he describes himself. According to the jury, “In a wholly unassuming way, Tao’s video engages with some of the most pressing issues of our times: race, gender, religious traditions, the importance of listening to the other, and the importance of seeing oneself… all of this with the potential to create a much-needed sense of radical empathy in our world, in these times.”
RESIDENCY PRIZES
The Residency Prizes, first awarded in 1990, help usher in a new artistic and cultural cartography. The selected artists undertake two-month residencies at Videobrasil Residency Program partner organizations around the world. Thanks to Videobrasil’s becoming a part of a vast network of collaborators, the program already spanned all five continents, and for the 19th Festival it will cover Latin America, North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, bringing together the South-South and South-North axes.
A-I-R Laboratory Residency Prize
at A-I-R Laboratory (Warsaw, Poland)
Clara Ianni, Brazil
Forma Livre, 2013, video
Linha, 2013, drawing
Arquetopia_Videobrasil Residency Prize
At Arquetopia (Puebla, Mexico)
Paulo Nazareth, Brazil
Videos: L’Arbre D’Oublier, 2013; Cine África, 2012-13;
Ipê Amarelo, 2012-13
China Art Foundation Residency Prize
At Red Gate Residency (Beijing, China)
Koken Ergun, Turkey
Bayrak (The Flag), 2006, video installation
Delfina_Videobrasil Residency Prize
at Delfina Foundation (London, United Kingdom)
Luciana Magno, Brazil
Trans Amazônica, 2013, video
Goethe-Institut Residency Prize
at Residence Vila Sul (Salvador, Brazil)
Roy Dib, Lebanon
A Spectacle of Privacy, 2014, video installation
Res Artis Residency Prize
at Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Woodside, Usa)
Karolina Bregula, Poland
Fire-Followers, 2013, video
Res Artis Residency Prize
at Kooshk Residency (Tehran, Iran)
Aline X & Gustavo Jardim, Brazil
Tocaia, 2014, video installation
Res Artis Residency Prize
at Kyoto Art Center (Kyoto, Japan)
Maya Watanabe, Peru / Netherlands
Escenarios II, 2014, video installation
Wexner Center For The Arts Residency Prize
at Wexner Center For The Arts (Columbus, USA)
Pilar Mata Dupont, Australia
Purgatorio, 2014, video
SPECIAL PRIZE: Haroon Gunn-Salie, South Africa
This year, the Festival awarded a special prize to a piece that is not a part of the jury’s selection pool: the SP-Arte/Videobrasil Prize. The artist Haroon Gunn-Salie (South Africa), featured in the Festival with his sculpture Sunday Best (2014), will have a solo exhibition slated to open during the São Paulo International Art Fair in April 2016, at Associação Cultural Videobrasil’s headquarters Galpão VB.
The plural production of the Global South will take São Paulo by storm during the 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil | Southern Panoramas. This edition of the Festival will have three exhibits featuring work by 62 artists and groups hailing from 27 countries at Sesc Pompeia and Galpão VB, the new headquarters of Associação Cultural Videobrasil. The program also includes a parallel show featuring Videobrasil Collection artworks at Paço das Artes.
The curatorial team, composed of Bernardo José de Souza, Bitu Cassundé, João Laia, Júlia Rebouças, and Solange Farkas (chief curator), has made the South and its myriad issues the core of this edition’s entire program, allowing them to inspire and drive the artwork and project selection, and the curating of all its exhibitions, public programs, and publications.
For the first time ever, the Festival features a group exhibit by guest artists that attests to the potency of production from this geopolitical area. The Southern Panoramas | Guest Artists show, at Sesc Pompeia’s Galpão venue, features never-before-shown Festival-commissioned pieces by Abdoulaye Konaté (Mali), as well as works by Gabriel Abrantes (Portugal), Rodrigo Matheus (Brazil), Sonia Gomes (Brazil), and Yto Barrada (Morocco/France). The aftermath of imperialism and colonialism, identity building, updated handicraft in the contemporary art context, global transit, and the culture-nature connection are some of the topics addressed in their work, filtered down through different experiences and languages.
Sesc Pompeia also features pieces by 53 artists and groups selected through a call for submissions. At Sesc Pompeia’s Área de Convivência,
Southern Panoramas | Selected Artworks showcases videos, video installations, photographs, prints, paintings, performances, and installations. The exhibition design by architect André Vainer enables viewers to realize the commonalities between different pieces as they move around the premises. In certain pieces, political overtones prevail. Some deal with geographical displacement, diasporas, and the notion of belonging. The fictional gesture (tending towards science fiction) is also present, as is discussion surrounding the perception of human scale in relation to nature or major systems of power. Sesc Pompeia’s Teatro hosts the 19th Festival’s Film Program, featuring works created for the big screen, one performance, and a selection of pieces by guest artist Gabriel Abrantes.
The Southern Panoramas | Commissioned Projects exhibit marks the Festival’s investment in the commissioning of artmaking projects, a new feature of this edition. The exhibit has inaugurated Galpão VB, the new Associação Cultural Videobrasil headquarters, set to host permanent Videobrasil Collection activation actions such as exhibits, film programs, seminars, workshops, and meetings. Galpão VB is also designed to host creative processes, artist residencies, and creative laboratories. During the 19th Festival, the venue features works by the artists selected via the open call for projects: Carlos Monroy (Colombia) has created an installation and performance about the controversial origin of the lambada dance and music style; Cristiano Lenhardt (Brazil) has worked on a film where Brazil's native background and urban settings come together; Keli-Safia Maksud (Kenya) has built an installation that speculates on African identity through printed fabrics; and Ting-Ting Cheng (Taiwan) prepared a library of hundreds of books about inexistent places.
The parallel exhibition Quem nasce pra aventura não toma outro rumo (Those born for adventure don’t stray from the path) features Videobrasil Collection artworks at Paço das Artes. Curated by Associação Cultural Videobrasil’s Archive and Research coordinator Diego Matos, the show echoes reflections elicited by the 19th Festival. Taking Brazilian productions as its starting point, it reaches out to other outlying and borderline references, through 15 pieces by 17 artists, dating from 1978 to 2012. Artworks by Brazil’s Cao Guimarães, Carlos Nader, Karim Aïnouz and Marcelo Gomes, among others, are interspersed with productions by Nurit Sharett (Israel), Clive van den Berg (Zambia), Claudia Aravena (Chile), Gabriel Acevedo Velarde (Peru) and Malek Bensmail (Algeria), dealing with issues such as affection, time, democracy, document, fiction, speech, hearing, and dissent, and providing a comprehensive overview of Associação’s collection.
Each of the venues has its own Reflection Zone, offering publications released in partnership by Videobrasil and Edições Sesc São Paulo, and computers with access to online platforms Channel VB, PLATFORM: VB, and Video Library, comprising 1500-plus works from the Videobrasil Collection.
Exhibitions, Film Programs, Performances & Public Programs. In addition to three exhibitions, the 19th Festival's agenda is made up of film programs, performances, public programs (comprising meetings and conversations, seminar and workshops) and educational activities.
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