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Fellowship

Fellow 2018/2019

Thiago de Paula Souza at the opening of Tony Cokes: To Live as Equals, BAK, 2019 Photo: Tom Janssen

Thiago de Paula Souza

Thiago de Paula Souza lives and works in Taboão da Serra district of São Paulo as a curator and educator with a background in the social sciences. In 2018/2019 he was one of the fellows in BAK’s post-academic Fellowship Program, and he is curator of the exhibition Tony Cokes: To Live as Equals, 28 February–17 May 2020 at BAK. With curator Gabi Ngcobo, De Paula Souza created the platform I’ve seen your face before, as part of the project Echoes of South Atlantic for the Goethe Institut in São Paulo. De Paula Souza  was a member of the curatorial team of the 10th Berlin Biennial, entitled We Don’t Need Another Hero. Currently (2020) he is co-curating the 3rd edition of Frestas – Triennial of Arts, in Sorocaba, São Paulo.

Thiago de Paula Souza

Thiago de Paula Souza lives and works in Taboão da Serra district of São Paulo as a curator and educator with a background in the social sciences. In 2018/2019 he was one of the fellows in BAK’s post-academic Fellowship Program, and he is curator of the exhibition Tony Cokes: To Live as Equals, 28 February–17 May 2020 at BAK. With curator Gabi Ngcobo, De Paula Souza created the platform I’ve seen your face before, as part of the project Echoes of South Atlantic for the Goethe Institut in São Paulo. De Paula Souza  was a member of the curatorial team of the 10th Berlin Biennial, entitled We Don’t Need Another Hero. Currently (2020) he is co-curating the 3rd edition of Frestas – Triennial of Arts, in Sorocaba, São Paulo.

Fellowship Research Trajectory

The image of Brazil in the macropolitical sphere has been associated with utopian projections implied in notions of progress, geopolitical stabilization, economic growth, and social welfare. Faced with structural inequalities, institutionalized genocide, police violence, devastation of the environment, collapse in the micro- and macropolitical spheres, the rhetoric of the generalized crisis of Global Capitalism, among other conflicts, it seems possible that all promises of these utopian narratives about Brazil have failed or succeeded in masking the here-now, the conflicts and tensions inseparable from the country’s recent history as a postcolonial nation project.

Curator and educator Thiago de Paula Souza’s research asks: Could these be seen as signs of the end of a recent utopia, or did they only open the eternal dystopic cycle that dominates Brazilian history? How have these transformations, these discontinuities, accompanied by these repetitions, affected ways of perceiving reality or society? Were people producing new possible futures or are we still completely haunted by utopian cosplays of the past? What experiments from the past still have relevance or creative power today? Is the dream over again? This research attempts to activate spaces for critical thinking and collective action, digging some historical ghosts, dreaming, and building new narratives for now and then.

Fellows in Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and MIT Press, Cambridge, MA and London present Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent, the first reader in BAK’s BASICS series.      Print this page BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and MIT Press, Cambridge, MA and London present Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent, edited by Maria […]

Thiago de Paula Souza Co-Curates Frestas

BAK 2018/2019 Fellow Thiago de Paula Souza has been chosen to co-curate Frestas, Triennial of Arts, São Paulo in 2020. Co-Fellow Haseeb Ahmed shows at the exhibition.

Thiago de Paula Souza curates Tony Cokes: To Live As Equals at BAK

BAK 2018/2019 Fellow Thiago de Paula Souza curates Tony Cokes: To Live as Equals at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst (2020–2021).  Tony Cokes: To Live as Equals brings together selected video works from the past 30 years, immersing viewers in the audiovisual language that artist Tony Cokes has developed over his career, which typically blurs aesthetics […]

Jota Mombaça: Visionary Fiction, Activist Writing, and Critical Practices

BAK 2018/2019 Fellows Thiago de Paula Souza and Mick Wilson, along with BAK, co-convene the April 2019 Fellows Intensive focusing on conceptions of violence. Along with screenings, presentations, and discussions curated and conducted by these Fellows, artists, writer, and performer Jota Mombaça joins the Fellows to lead them through collective reading exercises, collaborative writing processes, […]

False Heroes Must Be Forgotten: Rotunda Magazine conversation with Thiago de Paula Souza

Carolina Martínez speaks with BAK 2018/2019 Fellow Thiago de Paula Souza about his role as a curator of the 10th Berlin Biennale for Rotunda Magazine. From the article: Last month finished the latest Berlin Biennale, developed under the curatorial concept “We don’t need another hero”, where the concepts of power that we drag from imperialism […]

Program

Exhibition and public program

16 October 2020 13.00–31 January 2021 19.00

Tony Cokes: To Live as Equals [closed due to the prolonged Covid-19 lockdown]