Frestas is a triennial initiative – a project, program and exhibition – that is part of the wide-ranging cultural agenda of SESC São Paulo.

As a transdisciplinary platform, it promotes new actions and reflections in a broader field of the visual arts, engaging the public and the circuit in a more decentralized way. Frestas is concerned with a passage, cracking and rupture – an opening to a new democratic place of activity.

Since its 1st edition, the exhibition has presented around 170 artists from a wide variety of generations and backgrounds, in different curatorial contexts and programmatic cross-sections. Its extensive spectrum of participants allows for interchange among local, regional and international artists, while also promoting dialogic instances with various professionals from the area, including curators, researchers, professors, cultural agents and others, and with a vast range of publics.

This edition is being headed up by a trio of young Brazilian curators who in recent years have been comprehensively exploring curatorial practices, on experimental and democratic discursive platforms. The team was chosen through a series of discussions with various professionals in the city of Sorocaba, having demonstrated extensive prior engagement in discussing, listening and research on themes and concerns shared in common with SESC’s programming in a diversity of artistic languages and social values. Therefore, this edition relies on SESC’s appointment of a curatorial commission consisting of:

Beatriz Lemos (Rio de Janeiro, RJ), curator and researcher, with an MA in Social History of Culture from PUC-RJ. She conceived the research platform Lastro – Intercâmbios Livres em Arte and works in the promotion, teaching and curating of processes of anticolonial, antiracist and feminist creation in Brazil and Latin America. She is the curator of Bolsa Pampulha 2018/2019 (Belo Horizonte, MG) and coordinates the Grupo de Estudos Lastro na Casa 1 (São Paulo, SP). In 2017, she served on the curatorial commission of the 20th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil and coordinated the artist residency Travessias Ocultas – Lastro Bolívia.

Diane Lima (Mundo Novo, BA), curator and researcher, with an MA in Communication and Semiotics from PUC-SP. She carries out multidisciplinary curatorial practices in a decolonial perspective. This year, she was co-curator of the artist residency PlusAfroT, at Villa Waldberta, and of the group exhibition Lost Body – Displacement as Choreography, both in Munich, Germany. In 2018, she was the curator of the Valongo Festival Internacional da Imagem and a member of the Grupo de Críticos de Arte of the Centro Cultural São Paulo.

Thiago de Paula Souza (São Paulo, SP), curator and educator with a background in the social sciences. He participates in the program Propositions for Non-Fascist-Living, organized by BAK (base voor actuele kunst), in Utrecht, Netherlands. With curator Gabi Ngcobo, he created the platform I’ve seen your face before, as part of the project Ecos do Atlântico Sul, of Goethe Institut, in São Paulo. In 2018, he was a member of the curatorial team of the 10th Berlin Biennial, entitled We Don’t Need Another Hero.

This curatorial team is consistent with the institution’s aim of confronting a contemporary global reality, opening borders and constructing dialogues with the international circuit, without losing sight of the local complexity.

SESC – Serviço Social do Comércio is a nonprofit private institution created in 1946 by business leaders of the commerce and service sector throughout Brazil. In São Paulo, SESC has 40 centers active in the areas of Culture, Education, Sports, Leisure and Health. The institution’s actions are guided by its educational character and aim to foster social well-being based on a broad understanding of the term culture.

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