The renowned critic Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator of Serpentine Galleries, who has already carried out projects in Brazil such as Lina Bo Bardi’s Glass House exhibition (2012) and was appointed by Art Review magazine as the most powerful man in arts in 2009; Gunnar Kvaran, director of the Fearnly Astrup Museum (Oslo), which holds one of the largest contemporary art collections in the world; and Thierry Raspail, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon and the Lyon Biennial are the curators of Imagine Brazil.

Over the past five years, this trio has come to the country and keeps contact with the national art scene through meetings and visits to museums, institutions, universities, exhibitions, artists’ studios, galleries, etc. Premised on this research work and in order to draw a contemporary panorama of Brazilian art, the curators have designed this exhibition. Imagine Brazil brings together 14 young emerging artists who, based on conceptual works, have plunged into multiple support options such as paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, videos and music using various languages.

To place their works in a historical context, each participant was requested to choose an elder artist considered important in the contemporary art scene and relevant to his/her respective work, so that another exhibition would be built inside the exhibition. Further, considering the artist books’ relevance in the practice of this new generation, the curators invited Jacopo Crivelli Visconti and Ana Luiza Fonseca to supplement the exhibition with a selection of 19 such books.

Imagine Brazil, first incepted in Oslo (Astrup Fearnly museum) and having been to Lyon (MAC) and Doha, curiously puts together among young people (post 2000) Brazilian artists who were educated participating in residence assignments, exhibitions and even biennials outside of Brazil, thus making up a highly internationalized generation. What has particularly caught the attention of the three curators, as highlighted by them, was the number of young artists who distanced themselves from the modernist tradition, no longer working under formal aesthetic paradigms, but questioning and deconstructing this heritage. “They are inventing new codes and procedures in a conceptual narrative with great breadth of topics in an attempt to re-examine the complex history of art and the painful history of their country, and also point out the tensions and social and economic inequalities that distress them.”

The young artists (and their guests) include: Deyson Gilbert (Montez Magno); Rodrigo Matheus (Fernanda Gomes); Adriano Costa (Tunga); Mayana Redin (Milton Machado); Jonathas de Andrade (Caetano Veloso); Rodrigo Cass (Rivane Neuesnschwander); Paulo Nazareth (JBorges); Sofia Borges (Maria Martins); Cinthia Marcelle (Pedro Moraleida); Sara Ramo (Cildo Meireles); Marcellvs L (Arrigo Barnabé); Gustavo Speridião (Carlos Zílio); Paulo Nimer Pjota (Adriana Varejão); and Thiago Martins de Melo (Tunga).

The 19 artists’ books, in their turn, are authored by Marlon de Azambuja, Chiara Banfi, Artur Barrio, Debora Bolsoni, Waltercio Caldas, Felipe Cohen, Marilá Dardot, DetanicoLain, Ana Luiza Dias Batista, Marcius Galan, João Loureiro, Milton Marques, Lúcia Mindlin, Leya Mira Brander, Fabio Morais, Carlos Nunes, Nicolás Robbio, Lucas Simões and Gustavo Speridião.