Between Carnival and Crisis: How Rio's Biennial Reimagines the City

On a sweltering February afternoon in 2011, curator Paulo Herkenhoff stood in the grand atrium of the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, gesturing toward the neoclassical ceiling as workers installed scaffolding below. "Rio has always been imagined by others," he said to the small group of journalists gathered for a preview of the city's first international art biennial. "Now we will imagine ourselves."

This statement—part declaration of independence, part curatorial manifesto—captured the audacious spirit behind the Rio Art Biennial's creation. In a global landscape already crowded with biennials (nearly 300 worldwide), Rio's entry was neither a vanity project nor a tourism initiative, but rather a strategic intervention in how Brazil's cultural capital represented itself to the world and, perhaps more crucially, to its own citizens.

The timing was significant: Brazil was ascending economically, preparing to host both the World Cup and Olympics, and Rio was undergoing rapid urban transformation. Yet beneath the narrative of progress lay persistent contradictions—extreme inequality, environmental vulnerability, and the complex legacies of colonialism. The biennial emerged as a space to engage with these tensions rather than obscure them behind the spectacle of mega-events.

"We decided early that we would not create another Venice or São Paulo," recalls Luiz Camillo Osorio, who served on the biennial's founding committee. "Those models worked for their contexts, but Rio demanded something different—more distributed, more embedded in the life of the city, more willing to embrace contradictions."

This vision manifested in the biennial's distinctive structure. Rather than concentrate exhibitions in a single pavilion (as in Venice) or park (as in São Paulo), the Rio Art Biennial spread across diverse venues: established museums, emerging galleries, public squares, and even temporary structures in favelas. This approach transformed the biennial experience into an urban journey, where moving between artworks meant navigating the city's social and geographical complexities.

The impact was immediately apparent in the inaugural edition's centerpiece: a series of site-specific installations along the Guanabara Bay waterfront. Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto created a massive biomorphic structure beneath the modernist Museum of Modern Art, while Colombian artist Doris Salcedo installed a somber memorial to victims of violence that stretched from the museum's grounds to the water's edge. These works directly engaged with their settings, drawing connections between artistic expression and civic space.

By the 2015 edition, the biennial had evolved into an even more ambitious interrogation of the relationship between art and city. Curator Luis Pérez-Oramas selected "The Body in the City" as the central theme, commissioning projects that examined how urban environments shape human experience. The most provocative was "Occupation," a collaborative project by the Brazilian collective Frente 3 de Fevereiro, which transformed abandoned buildings in Rio's rapidly gentrifying port area into temporary exhibition spaces addressing displacement and housing rights.

This willingness to engage with controversial issues became a defining characteristic of the Rio Art Biennial, distinguishing it from more established counterparts. The 2019 edition explicitly addressed environmental crisis through "Anthropocene River," a sprawling exhibition that traced the Guanabara Bay's ecological deterioration through installations, scientific data, and indigenous knowledge systems. Mexican artist Pedro Reyes created "Floating Garden," a series of bioremediating sculptures that actually cleaned polluted water as they floated in the bay—art with both symbolic and literal impact.

Perhaps most remarkable has been the biennial's evolving relationship with Rio's favelas, the informal communities that house nearly a quarter of the city's population but are often marginalized in official cultural narratives. Initially criticized for tokenistic engagement, the biennial has progressively deepened its connections with these communities, establishing year-round programs and supporting the development of cultural centers like the Galpão Bela Maré in the Complexo da Maré favela.

"The biennial now understands that favelas aren't just sites for temporary artistic intervention but are cultural producers in their own right," explains Jailson de Souza e Silva, founder of the Observatório de Favelas. "This shift has been crucial in challenging hierarchies about who creates art and where art belongs."

This evolution reflects the biennial's core mission: not merely displaying contemporary art but using it to reimagine Rio itself. In a city famously divided between morro (hill, where favelas climb the slopes) and asfalto (asphalt, the formal city below), the biennial creates temporary bridges between segregated spaces, inviting movement across boundaries that structure everyday life.

As the Rio Art Biennial approaches its eighth edition in 2025, it faces both expanded possibilities and intensified challenges. Brazil's political polarization, environmental threats to the Amazon, and the ongoing struggles for indigenous and Afro-Brazilian rights create an urgent context for artistic intervention. Meanwhile, global debates about decolonizing cultural institutions and addressing climate emergency resonate strongly with the biennial's founding concerns.

The upcoming edition, themed "Crossing Boundaries: Art in Dialogue," signals continuity with the biennial's established approach while emphasizing exchange across disciplines, geographies, and knowledge systems. The preliminary artist list reflects global diversity while maintaining strong representation from Brazil and Latin America.

"What we've learned over the years is that Rio doesn't need a biennial that mimics global models," says current artistic director Clarissa Diniz. "It needs one that emerges from and responds to the specific realities of this place—a biennial that exists between carnival and crisis, between celebration and critique, between the spectacular and the everyday."

In this commitment to contextual response rather than universal formula, the Rio Art Biennial offers a model for how contemporary art can engage meaningfully with urban complexity worldwide. Its legacy lies not in monumental pavilions or market validation but in moments of connection across difference—in art that imagines the city not as it appears in postcards, but as it is lived, contested, and continually reimagined by those who call it home.