The Bienal de São Paulo has announced the two chief curators for the 2027 edition of the Brazilian exhibition: Amanda Carneiro and Raphael Fonseca. The duo’s theme for the Bienal will be announced in the coming months.
Held in Oscar Niemeyer–design Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo in Ibirapuera Park, the exhibition is the largest of its kind in Latin America.
“The selection of Amanda Carneiro and Raphael Fonseca for the 37th edition is part of this evolving history,” said Andrea Pinheiro, president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, which manages the biennial. “For the second time, two Brazilian curators are taking on, together and on equal footing, the artistic leadership of an edition. It is a decision born of a careful, collective selection process and a clear conviction: that there exists, in Brazil, a curatorial generation with the talent, experience, and vision necessary to keep the Bienal de São Paulo at the center of the artistic debate of our time.”
Fonseca is among today’s most prominent Brazilian curators working internationally. Until earlier this year, he was curator of modern and contemporary Latin American art at the Denver Art Museum, where he is now curator at large. He is currently based in Lisbon, serving as visual arts curator for Culturgest. Prior to DAM, he worked at the Contemporary Art Museum of Niterói, Brazil.
He has also worked on major recurring exhibitions, serving as chief curator of the 2025 Bienal do Mercosul and a cocurator of the forthcoming 3rd Counterpublic Triennial, which will open in the fall, as well as a co-curator for the 2023 SESC Videobrasil Biennale. In Venice, he will organize the Taiwan Pavilion.
Carneiro is a curator at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), who has organized acclaimed exhibitions for artists like Santiago Yahuarcani (2026), Hulda Guzmán (2025), Serigrafistas Queer (2024), Kang Seung Lee (2024), Madalena Santos Reinbolt (2022), Abdias Nascimento(2022), Beatriz Milhazes (2020–21), Leonor Antunes (2019), and Sonia Gomes (2018). She also served on the curatorial team for the 2024 Venice Biennale’s main exhibition, “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere,” which was organized by MASP artistic director Adriano Pedorsa. Prior to MASP, she worked at Museu Afro Brasil Emanoel Araujo in São Paulo.
“Taking on this project is, at once, a joy, a challenge, and a responsibility,” Carneiro said in a statement. “I am excited to work with artists in São Paulo, which is also my city, to support the realization of their projects and to collaborate with the Bienal team in building this edition.”
