Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Solange Farkas is one of the six curators invited for the 2016 Dakar Biennale, alongside Nadine Aimé Bilong aka Nad Bil (Cameroon/France), Orlando Britto (Canary Islands), Valentina Levy (Italy), Sujong Song (Korea) and Sumesh Sharma (India). Tasked with choosing the names to represent Brazil in the event’s show entitled Travessias [Journeys], Farkas picked works by Daniel Lima, Moisés Patrício, Paulo Nazareth, Sônia Gomes, and Thiago Martins. The exhibit is part of the official Biennale program and opens on May 3 at the IFAN Museum (Dakar, Senegal).

The curator selected artists who share a close connection with African identity, even though they display different profiles and approaches to said connection. The show features more tradition-oriented artists and others whose research tends to the contemporary. Some are more experienced and renowned; others are younger and not represented by any gallery. The exhibit showcases the diversity of these Brazilian artists’ output and their takes on the African continent.

“Aside from their shared African descent, which is otherwise a trait of a significant portion of Brazil’s population, and from their somehow political perspectives, what catches the eye is the diversity of strategies and the widely varied realms that these artists choose to work with – from places of intimacy to the city, from the dark oceans that harbor legacies of the past to the dusty African backroads,” the curator says.

The founder and general-director of Associação Cultural Videobrasil, Solange Farkas was responsible for organizing two of the earliest and biggest African contemporary art shows ever in Brazil: the Pan African Exhibition of Contemporary Art (2005) and the African Contemporary Art Exhibition (2000).

Find out more on: http://dakart.net