On October 7, 2015, the first panel of the Seminar Places and Meanings in Art: Debates from the South, organized by Sabrina Moura, gathered artists and curators involved in the 19th Festival to discuss the theme Rethinking Traditions: Art, Gesture and Contemporaneity. The panelists were the artists Abdoulaye Konaté (Mali), Roy Dib (Lebanon), and the curators N’Goné Fall (Senegal), a member of the 19th Festival jury, and curatorial committee member Júlia Rebouças (Brazil).

During the meeting, Júlia Rebouças spoke about the curatorial process developed over the course of 18 months alongside Bernardo José de Souza, Bitu Cassundé, João Laia and Solange Farkas, in what she called a “close-up” of the 19th Festival. Abdoulaye Konaté, one of the guest artists of this edition of the Festival, expounded on his career in art, problematized traditional Fine Arts teaching and commented on his visit to a Guarani native village in São Paulo, which inspired the works shown in the Southern Panoramas | Guest Artists exhibition. Roy Dib, who is featured in Southern Panoramas | Selected Works, went over his creative process, highlighting the pieces Mondial 2010 (2014) and A Spectacle of Privacy (2014), which earned him one of the Festival’s residency prizes. N’Goné Fall introduced the public to a cross-section of artists from several African countries, favoring the term