Carollina Lauriano, Daniel Lima and Hélio Menezes talk with SP-Arte

Carollina Lauriano

What made you decide to start working as a curator?
The possibility of creating new conversation fields based on art.

What is the focus of your curatorial research?
The production of young women artists in contemporary art.

What changes have you identified in the São Paulo art scene in recent years?
The voice raising of the majoritarian minorities and the great thematic exhibitions helped in discussions about “inclusion”. And I say inclusion in quotes, because black artists, women, queers, have always been producing their works, but without the deserved prominence in the market. So I think one of the big changes is recognition, even if still within a segmentation.

Do you have black artists to recommend?
I have several, from the most acclaimed ones like Jaime Lauriano, Rosana Paulino, Sidney Amaral, to a new generation like Maxwell Alexandre, No Martins and the collective AEANFDC (Environment for the Blackening of National Art in Favor of Cultural Decolonization), who gave much to talk about this year. Igi Ayedun and Samuel D’Saboia are also two names I have been following.

What are your expectations for the future?
That any discussion that has already started does not stop, as if they think that our part has already been done. Together with this I expect more and more artists within the country’s artistic scene.

Hélio Menezes

What made you decide to start working as a curator?
I received an invitation from Masp and Instituto Tomie Ohtake to compose the team of curators of the exhibition “Afro-Atlantic Histories” due to my master’s dissertation, “Between the occult and the visible – the construction of the concept of Afro-Brazilian art”. In it, I focused on critical, intellectual and artistic production, and the construction of museum institutions focused on Afro-Brazilian art. From the analysis of other people’s curatorships, I ended up getting involved in curatorial production. I transit in the process of shifting academic research to curatorial activity. Research work should not be confined to the academy’s walls, but should reach other audiences.

What is the focus of your curatorial research?
My curatorial work has focused on the production of black visualities, especially in Brazil (although not only), both from the point of view of black authorship and from the point of view of the representation of bodies and other elements and signs aimed at “black culture” more abstractly and broadly.

What changes have you identified in the São Paulo art scene over recent years?
I see a greater openness to productions previously concealed from the mainstream of art. It is a process of valorization that is still very occasional, which must be extended to the artistic production of subjects who are repeatedly excluded from the centers of power: women artists, from outside the Rio-São Paulo axis, blacks, indigenous people and other racial, regional and class designations. This scenario of change already indicates an intimate relationship between the artistic scene and the social discussions that have reached our country. Pressures for a review of history, art history and the uses and abuses of museum spaces and important galleries in the city of São Paulo have forced these places to look at other productions. I find in them a fruitful source of renewal and questions about the artistic structure itself in the city of São Paulo.

Do you have black artists to recommend?
Rosana Paulino is an inescapable reference, not only for her quality, sophisticated production, for being an artist of the greatest importance and delicacy, but also for being an inspiration for a series of black and non-black artists who have been succeeding her. Another name is No Martins, a young artist from the east side of São Paulo who has a production that is still little known by the general public and specialists, but already robust and extremely delicate.

What are your expectations for the future?
I think it will be a future of conflict where, on the one hand, we have a conservative, backward political scenario, which aims to submit these so-called minority productions under the carpet, into the dusty drawers; and, on the other hand, an accumulation of struggles, strategies and quality of artistic works that no longer allow themselves to be subjected to a place that is not of protagonism. I like to bet that these movements for greater diversity and plurality in the arts will not take steps backwards.

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Hélio Menezes is an anthropologist and internationalist, graduated in International Relations and Social Sciences at the University of São Paulo, where he became a master and is currently a doctoral student in Social Anthropology. He was international coordinator of the World Social Forum in Belém (Brazil, 2009), Dakar (Senegal, 2011) and Tunis (Tunisia, 2013). He works as an independent curator and has developed research on Afro-Brazilian art, race relations in Brazil, youth, anthropology of image, museums, art and activism. He was also one of the curators of the exhibition “Afro-Atlantic Histories” (Masp and Tomie Othake Institute, 2018) and of the performance show “E eu não sou uma mulher?” (Tomie Ohtake Institute, 2018).