Hélio Menezes
AfroBrasis
MAY 24, 2024, 18h30
Ilídio Pinho Auditorium
In this talk, Hélio Menezes intends to analyse the history and legacy of the Museu AfroBrasil, in the year in which it celebrates its 20th anniversary, as well as highlighting the challenges and proposals for renewal in the years to come. Through a reading of works from the MAB's collections and its inaugural exhibition, he proposes to investigate the extent to which the museum has anticipated a counter-colonial outlook in the arts by telling, in an arrangement between History, Memory, Culture and Contemporaneity, another story of Brazil - with the African matrices that formed and structured it as the protagonist.
Hélio Menezes
Image credits: Pablo Saborido
Hélio Menezes is an anthropologist, curator, critic and researcher. He was the curator of the 35th São Paulo Arts Biennial, "Choreographies of the Impossible" (2023). He was curator of Contemporary Art and Literature at the São Paulo Cultural Centre (2019-2021) and international coordinator of the World Social Forum in Belém (2009), Dakar (2011) and Tunis (2013). He holds a master's degree and a PhD from the University of São Paulo and is an Affiliated Scholar at Princeton University's Brazil Lab; he was also a student at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po, 2007) and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM, 2013).His most recent work includes curating the exhibitions Carolina Maria de Jesus: um Brasil para os brasileiros (IMS); Vozes contra o racismo; Abre-Caminhos (CCSP), The discovery of what it means to be Brazilian (Mariane Ibrahim Gallery - Chicago), Há luz atrás dos muros (permanent exhibition at the Osório Cesar Museum of Art), Jota Mombaça: Crossing the Great Night without Switching on the Light (CCSP); Afro-Atlantic Stories (MASP/Instituto Tomie Ohtake); 30th and 31st editions of the CCSP Exhibition Programme; Nova República (SP Architecture Biennial) among others. His texts can be found in various publications, such as the catalogues for the exhibitions Histórias Afro-Atlânticas (vol. 1 and 2); 10th Berlin Bienalle for Contemporary Art; Rubem Valentim: construções atlânticas (MASP); Prison to prison: an intimate story between two architectures (Venice Architecture Biennale). In 2021, ArtReview magazine recognised him as one of the 100 most important people in contemporary art in the world.
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