There Are Many Possibilities and Impossibilities in This World: A Reflection on Spiral Time and the "35th São Paulo Biennial”

Abstract

The epistemological understanding of spiral time, developed by Brazilian thinker Leda Maria Martins (2021), offers a restitutive perspective on the experience of time in its spiral form and serves as inspiration for the design of the “35th São Paulo Biennial”, entitled Choreographies of the Impossible. This epistemology, rooted in Black practice, poetry and thought, brings about disobedient movements capable of creating ways of breaking free from the categories established by the colonial hegemonic matrix and of crossing different strategies of survival, rhythm and rupture. The curatorial and educational interest of Choreographies of the Impossible — in creating a Biennial conceived from the point of view of the time that spirals — opens space for deep reflections on how curatorial proposals can be involved in attempts at reparative gestures, while at the same time being surrounded by institutional impossibilities. Considering that colonial institutions are intrinsically linked to structures of power, privilege and market logics, the tensions and contradictions of this context inform the impossibilities of decolonising institutions. Faced with these questions, this article seeks to carry out a reading of the Choreographies of the Impossible, reflecting on the curatorial and educational work of the “35th São Paulo Biennial" in conjunction with the concept of "spiral time", at the same time as offering a critical analysis of the tensions and contradictions in the museum's attempts at decolonisation.