The Curatorial Committee for the 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil: Southern Panoramas is a highly active team within the contemporary art circuit, with vast knowledge of art production from the territory known as the global South. The Committee is in charge of laying down the concepts and curatorial framework that govern the Festival’s artwork selection. The team also creates and develops the event’s activities, such as film shows, performances, artist residencies, Public Programs, educational actions and publications.
This year, apart from Solange Farkas, the Festival’s general curator, the Curatorial Committee comprises Portugal’s João Laia and Brazil’s Bernardo José de Souza, Bitu Cassundé and Júlia Rebouças, who also served as curator during the 18th edition.
Learn more about the members of the Curatorial Committee for the 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil: Southern Panoramas:
Solange Farkas (lives and works out of São Paulo, Brazil)
Curator and director of Associação Cultural Videobrasil. She was the founder and is the general curator of the International Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, an event which has brought leading international contemporary artists to Brazil. She was responsible for the exhibitions Sophie Calle – Take care of yourself (2009) and Joseph Beuys – We Are the Revolution (2010). The highlights of her curating career include the African Contemporary Art Exhibition (São Paulo, 2000); Pan African Contemporary Art Exhibition (Salvador, 2005); La Mirada Discreta: Marcel Odenbach & Robert Cahen (Buenos Aires, 2006); Eder Santos – Roteiro Amarrado (Rio de Janeiro, 2010), Isaac Julien: Geopoetics (São Paulo, 2012), Alfabeto Infinito | Angela Detanico e Rafael Lain (Porto Alegre, 2013) and Videobrasil 30 years (2013/2014), which spun off touring shows in Warsaw, Poland; Atlanta, USA; Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa, and Beijing, China. She served as a guest curator at the 5th Videozone: International Video Art Biennial (Israel, 2010), the 16th Cerveira Biennial (Portugal, 2011), the 10th Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirates, 2011), the 3rd Macao Video Art Festival (China, 2012) and Screen from Barcelona Festival (Spain, 2012). She is a former director and chief curator of the Bahia Modern Art Museum (Salvador, 2007 to 2010). She participated in a program in honor of Videobrasil at the Festival de la Imagen (Manizales, Colombia, 2013). In that same year, the 6th Jakarta International Video Festival featured a program curated by Solange Farkas, as did FUSO, the annual video art exhibit in Lisbon, which partnered up with the curator and Associação Cultural Videobrasil again in 2014.
Bernardo José de Souza (lives and works out of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Independent curator, university professor and collaborator with publications on visual culture. He curated Espaço at the 9th Mercosur Biennial (Porto Alegre, 2013), served as coordinator of Film, Video and Photography at the Secretariat for Culture of the Porto Alegre City Hall (2005 to 2009) and collaborated for Vogue magazine and newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. The holder of a baccalaureate in Social Communication from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul and a specialization in Photography and Fashion from the London College of Fashion, and is a member of the boards of curators of the Contemporary Art Museum of Rio Grande do Sul and Fundação Vera Chaves Barcellos. For the past ten years, he has been working on several projects in partnership with organizations like the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin, Germany), Goethe Institut (Porto Alegre, Brazil) and the Inhotim Institute (Brumadinho, Brazil). He curated five editions of the Videoarte nos Jardins do DMAE (Video Art on the DMAE Gardens) project. As independent curator, he curated the shows Ponto de Fuga at Fundação Ecarta’s Art Gallery (Porto Alegre, 2011), Guy Bourdin (2011) and Mutatis Mutandis (2013), both at Largo das Artes (Rio de Janeiro), among others. He organized the art seminar RODA – Rodadas de Debates Sobre Arte (Porto Alegre, 2012).
Bitu Cassundé (lives and works out of Fortaleza, Brazil)
Carlos Eduardo Bitu Cassundé is the curator of the Contemporary Art Museum of Ceará (Fortaleza, Brazil) and coordinator of Porto Iracema das Artes’ Visual Arts Laboratory (Fortaleza, Brazil). The holder of a master’s degree from the School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, he served as assistant curator and research assistant at the Contemporary Art Museum of Ceará (Fortaleza, 1998 to 2007), was a member of the curating team for Itaú Cultural’s visual arts program Programa Rumos Artes Visuais (São Paulo, 2008 to 2009) and the director of Museu Murillo La Greca (Recife, 2009 to 2011). Recent curating projects include: Leonilson – Sob o peso dos meus amores at Itaú Cultural (São Paulo, 2011) and at the Iberê Camargo Foundation (Porto Alegre, 2012), Metrô de Superfície at Paço das Artes (São Paulo, 2012), Metrô de Superfície II at the São Paulo Cultural Center (São Paulo, 2013), Rotas: desvios e outros ciclos and Leonilson Inflamável, both at the Contemporary Art Museum of Ceará (Fortaleza, 2013). He was a member of the juries for several festivals across the country, including the CNI SESI Marcantonio Vilaça award jury (2011/2012). Alongside Clarissa Diniz, he formed the contemporary art collection of Cultural Center Banco do Nordeste, under the project Metrô de Superfície. He is currently a member of the curating team for the 5th edition of the CNI SESI SENAI Marcantonio Vilaça Prize.
João Laia (lives and works out of London, United Kingdom)
Writer and curator interested in the social sciences, film theory and contemporary art. He is a regular contributor for magazines Frieze and MOUSSE and newspaper Público. He is the curator of the image in motion section of the IndieLisboa Festival (Lisbon, Portugal). Former collaborator with the BES Art and Finance gallery (Lisbon, Portugal), Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain), Waterpieces Festival (Riga, Latvia), Moderna Museet (Stockholm, Sweden), and The Mews Project Space, Cell Project Space and Whitechapel Gallery, in London, United Kingdom. In 2014 he undertook a residency at the Fundazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin, Italy). He was a co-founder of the The Green Parrot, a non-profit facility dedicated to contemporary practices in Barcelona.
Júlia Rebouças (lives and works between Belo Horizonte and Brumadinho, Brazil)
Curator, art critic and researcher. She has served as curator at the Inhotim Institute (Brumadinho, Brazil) since 2007. Holds a master’s degree and is pursuing a doctorate under the Postgraduate Visual Arts Program of the Federal University of Minas Gerais. She served as joint curator for the 9th Mercosur Biennial (Porto Alegre, 2013) and was a member of the Curatorial Committee for the 18th International Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil (São Paulo, 2013). Independent curating projects include Zona de Instabilidade – Lais Myrrha at Caixa Cultural Sé (São Paulo, 2013) and A céu aberto, with Suely Rolnik, which competed in the 30th São Paulo Biennial (São Paulo, 2011).