São Paulo Biennial Foundation appoints curator for its forthcoming edition

Luis Pérez-Oramas will be responsible for the 30th São Paulo Biennial


São Paulo, Venezuelan-born Luis Pérez-Oramas will be responsible for the 30th São Paulo International Biennial to be held in 2012. Pérez-Oramas is expected to begin working as soon as the appointment is made public, putting together the curatorial team that will accompany him in the process of organizing the Biennial. The curator will be also responsible for the 30th Biennial’s traveling shows to be held in 2013 and, following the current agreement between Fundação Bienal and the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he will select the Brazilian representation at the 2013 Venice Biennial.


Pérez-Oramas was born in 1960 in Caracas and lives in New York, where he currently holds the position of The Estrellita Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art at The Museum of Modern Art. An art historian, a writer and a poet, Perez Oramas completed a PhD in Art History at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). Broadly involved with Brazilian art, Perez Oramas curated in 2009-2010 the exhibition Tangled Alphabets, a show featuring works by Mira Schendel and León Ferrari, which traveled from its original venue at MoMA to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid and to the Fundação Iberê Camargo in Porto Alegre. Guest curator at the 23rd São Paulo Bienal in 1998, Perez Oramas has also organized several shows at MoMA, among them Latin American and Caribbean Art: Selections from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art, in 2008; New Perspectives in Latin American Art, in 2007; and Transforming Chronologies: An Atlas of Drawings, in 2006.


Heitor Martins, president of Fundação Bienal, points out that “as a Latin American curator acting in a global platform and with an excellent reputation in the Brazilian art circuit, I trust that Luis Pérez-Oramas will offer an extremely positive contribution in order to position the São Paulo’ Biennial in the three domains that the institution interacts with: Brazil, Latin America and the world.”


The appointment process of the new curator began in October 2010, when the Board of Directors of the Fundação Bienal evaluated the background of some 20 potential candidates for the position. Following its strategic process, and after reviewing the candidates’ qualifications and the challenges involved in the organization of the 30th Biennial, three candidates were selected and invited to present preliminary projects.



After a careful analysis of the documents, the one submitted by Pérez-Oramas was retained as the most adequate. “I am pleased to announce, after a judicious evaluation process, the choice of Pérez-Oramas as our next curator. Making this announcement in February provides adequate time for the curator to thoroughly develop his research with the goal of producing a first rate exhibition,” Martins commented.


Luis Pérez-Oramas will take a partial leave of absence from the Museum of Modern Art, in order to fully accomplish his commitment at the Biennial and he is expected to fully return to his Museum duties in 2013.