26th Bienal Internacional de São Paulo

The Fundação Bienal de São Paulo will be opening its 26th Biennial on September 25, 2004. With the theme of Território Livre [in English, "Image Smugglers in a Free Territory], the exhibition will be held in 25,000 square meters of exhibition space on the three floors of the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, home of the Fundação Bienal, portão 3, Parque do Ibirapuera, São Paulo, Brazil.

This edition of the biennial – which is considered to be one of the three most important events of its kind in the world – features 140 artists from 60 different countries. The chief curator is Alfons Hug, who was in charge of the previous edition, in 2002.

The theme proposed derives from the idea of the no-man's land, not only geographically, politically and socially speaking, but mainly as an aesthetic field, where art defies the boundaries of reality.

The 26th Bienal de São Paulo is divided into 3 main segments: "National Representations", Special Project Rooms and "Invited Artists".

The "National Representations" segment presents the works of artists from 55 countries (one artist per country). The Bienal has encouraged the participation of a large number of African and Asian countries, which usually get little exposure in contemporary art shows. This year's edition also provides a special exhibition on African Photography, with a selection of 8 artists.


AFRICAN PHOTOGRAPHY
curator: Simon Njami

South Africa
Zwelethu Mthetwa

Togo
Cornelius Augustt Azzaglo

Nigeria
Otobong Nkanga

Great Britain/Ghana
Eileen Perrier

Democratic Republic of Congo
Jean Depara

Cameroon
Samuel Fosso

Senegal
Abderramane Sakaly

Senegal
Mama Casset


NATIONAL REPRESENTATIONS
BELGIUM
Cristine Felten & Véronique Massinger

BULGARIA
Albena Kazakova

CHILE
Patrick Hamilton

CHINA
Qu Yan

COLOMBIA
Jaime Avila

FRANCE
Melik Ohanian

GERMANY
Thomas Demand

HUNGARY
Peter Szarka

ITALY
Francesco Vezzoli

MEXICO
Miguel Calderón

NORWAY
Ingrid Book & Carina Hedén

PARAGUAY
Juan Britos

PERU
Carlos Runcie-Tanaka

POLAND
Piotr Uklanski

SINGAPORE
Ho Tzu Nyen

SPAIN
Fernando Sanchez Castillo

SWEDEN
Jonas Dahlberg

SWITZERLAND
Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger

UKRAINE
Victor Marushchenko

URUGUAY
Martin Sastre


INVITED ARTISTS
Curator: Alfons Hug

Karim Aïnouz & Marcelo Gomes
Brazil


Edward Burtynsky
Canada

René Francisco
Cuba

Simryn Gill
Australia

Naoya Hatakeyama
Japan

Vera Lutter
Germany

Fabiano Marques
Brazil

Aernout Mik
The Netherlands

Moataz Nasr
Egypt

Neistat Brothers
USA

Catherine Opie
USA

Rassim
Bulgaria

Caio Reisewitz
Brazil

Lois Renner
Austria

Julian Rosefeldt
Germany

Song Dong
China

Alec Soth
USA

Su-Mei Tse
Luxemburg

Veronika Zapletalová
Czech Republic

Krzysztof Zielinski
Poland


SPECIAL ROOMS
Curator: Alfons Hug

Thomas Struth
Germany