Spanning the Ocean(s)


Maumaus
c/o Residência Artística FAAP
Praça do Patriarca, 78 - Sé
01002-010 São Paulo – SP Brazil


In response to an invitation from the 29th São Paulo Biennial, the Maumaus Independent Study Programme temporarily moved last autumn to Brazil for two months.

The post-graduate seminar, entitled Spanning the Ocean(s), ran in conjunction with the 29th São Paulo Biennale from September 26 to November 19, 2010. It involved six artists from the group who had been attending the Programme in Lisbon at the time and seven additional artists selected in collaboration with the Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP) in São Paulo, whose artists’ residency programme hosted the Maumaus School. The group comprised Monique Allain, Renata de Bonis, Claire de Santa Coloma, Leon Domingos, Ana Estaregui, Henning Lundkvist, Ricky Mastro, Amaury Moraes, Nikolai Nekh, Lukas Rached, Sofia Berti Rojas, André Trindade and Joen P. Vedel.

Lecturers and guest lecturers from the Maumaus Programme were in São Paulo to teach during the seminar and to present lectures as a continuation of the regular Maumaus Lecture Series in Lisbon, being held at the 29th São Paulo Biennial at Ibirapuera Park. Artists, researchers, art historians and art theorists, including Maria Thereza Alves, Awam Amkpa, Jimmie Durham, Renée Green, Salah M. Hassan, Javier Anguera Phipps, Suely Rolnik, Manuela Ribeiro Sanches, and Gertrud Sandqvist, addressed issues related to their own theoretical and practical fields.

Building on the expertise on issues related to colonialism, post-colonialism and neo-colonialism developed by Maumaus since its foundation in 1992, the program facilitates intensive research into the past in order to better understand present and future perspectives. The seminar series focuses on themes such as interdependent relationships between the West and Africa, Africanity in the West and Europeanity in Africa and possible readings of multiple Modernities in both continents. Research into notions of history in general and comparative readings of texts by anti-colonial thinkers from the past and post-colonial thinkers from the present specifically instigated discussions on our 'now and here' in Europe, Africa and Latin-America.

A selection of the student artists presented results from the seminar in an exhibition entitled ESCAPE, which was presented at the Lunds Konsthall in Sweden between January 28 and February 27 2011 (in collaboration with the Malmö Art Academy/Lund University, Ramallah Art Academy and the Braunschweig University of Art).

The participation of Maumaus in the 29th São Paulo Biennial is funded by the Directorate-General for Arts of the Portuguese Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Lisbon, reflecting Lisbon’s position as a leading European centre of knowledge production.