12 September 2026 — 6 December 2026
With Not All Travellers Walk Roads—Of Humanity as Practice, the 36th Bienal de São Paulo comes to Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin. Taking place in Germany for the very first time, the Berlin edition of one of the oldest and most influential biennials unfolds as a distinct constellation of artistic positions, including newly conceived, readapted and site-specific works. The exhibition departs from Conceição Evaristo’s poem “Da calma e do silêncio” (Of calm and silence), in which she writes: “Not all travellers / walk roads / there are submerged worlds / that only the silence / of poetry penetrates.” It understands listening as one of the core tenets of the practice of humanity. Through such close attunement it becomes possible to enter into relation – with other beings, with lands and waters, with the multigenerational lineages we carry within us – and to foster spaces of coexistence and care. This notion of relation connects not only São Paulo and Berlin but also the two exhibition sites. Oscar Niemeyer’s Bienal Pavilion, a modernist landmark, stands in São Paulo’s Ibirapuera Park, itself shaped by the waters of the Córrego do Sapateiro, while Hugh Stubbins’s HKW building of the same era sits at the edge of the Tiergarten, close to the river Spree. Both sites form porous thresholds between architecture and landscape, interior and exterior, human and more-than-human worlds. Here the exhibition’s guiding metaphor of the estuary as a site of encounter gains particular resonance: a place where different waters meet, sustaining life through cultivation, interdependence, reciprocity and shared vulnerability. The exhibition rethinks humanity as a verb – a living practice that can renegotiate and dismantle prevailing asymmetries. Across installations, performances, sound works, storytelling and spatial interventions, the participating artists critically engage with the political and colonial inheritances embedded in modernity. In doing so they articulate forms of resistance to dehumanisation, extractivism and monocultural thinking, from São Paulo to Berlin and elsewhere. At the same time, the works cultivate gestures of care, nurturing and interdependence that extend beyond the human, engaging with animal and plant life, memory and spirit. Beauty emerges here as a political force, rooted in the ordinary, the fractured and the unfinished. Not All Travellers Walk Roads—Of Humanity as Practice is an invitation to trace those paths in pursuit of that practice. What routes do we take? How do we afford ourselves the privilege of going off track, off the road, embracing errancy, getting lost, finding other worlds? Bringing together more than thirty international artists working across a wide range of practices, this abridged Berlin edition of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo calls for joy, imagination and dreaming – not as escape, but as vital ways of conjugating humanity. The 36th Bienal de São Paulo is conceived by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, with co-curators Alya Sebti, Anna Roberta Goetz and Thiago de Paula Souza, co-curator at large Keyna Eleison, strategy and communications advisor Henriette Gallus, and deputy co-curators André Pitol and Leonardo Matsuhei. The Berlin edition is curated by Alya Sebti. Its opening takes place as part of Berlin Art Week. Admission: €10, reduced €7; free entry on Mondays, on the first Sunday of every month and during the closing weekend (5–6 December).
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Editorial coverage on Exhibo
Surface quality as an element of art: actual and implied texture, how painters and sculptors build it, and how to name it in front of a work.
Texture in art is the surface quality of a work: how it would feel in the hand, or how paint, line, and light make it look as if it would. This guide separates actual from implied texture, reads six named works, and shows how to describe texture without mixing it up with form, value, or a thick-paint recipe.
How pictures are organised: format, visual weight, and devices from Giotto to Mondrian, with the rule of thirds as one tool among many.
Composition in art is the arrangement of parts inside a frame. This vocabulary guide sets out how organisation works, reads six named pictures from Giotto to Mondrian, notes how living artists still compose, and flags mix-ups with golden-ratio overlays, numbered classroom “rules,” and sibling terms such as balance.
