Sertão Negro is both an aesthetic and political proposition, an initiative that challenges boundaries – between art and life, community and autonomy, collective organization, belonging, and displacement. Founded by Ceiça Ferreira and Dalton Paula, the project is a space for creation that respects individuality within a joint action, where art is not confined to the production of objects but unfolds into a way of inhabiting the world.
Based in Goiânia, Goiás, Sertão Negro hosts a studio, residencies for national and international artists, a film club, a capoeira group, an active kitchen, gardens, and nurseries
These are not mere metaphors of resistance but concrete tools in the search for sovereignty and self-determination, evoking quilombola and Indigenous resistance practices – both past and present. There, cultivation and creation intertwine, making the notions of care and continuity more than words: what is planted in the Sertão is a way of doing and thinking that transcends beyond its walls.
Formed by around thirty people – including resident artists, researchers, cooks, educators, curators, and members of Sertão Verde, a group focused on agroecology and food sovereignty – the collective promotes debates and exchanges of experiences in an alternative model of exchange, where processes are as important as the artistic production itself. The foundation of the project is rooted in quilombos and terreiros – spaces of resistance and knowledge – as well as in ancestral construction techniques and the wisdom of the land.
At the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, Sertão Negro manifests as an active and expanded space. In collaboration with the Fundação Bienal’s education team, the group proposed a public program with workshops, open studios, a film club, and activities in Ibirapuera Park. Inside the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, the work is organized around two stone circles, inspired by the Sertão Negro space where collective decisions are made. The stones, loaned by the Guarani of Jaraguá, São Paulo, represent a gesture of respect for the land’s time. Two walls structure the space: one presents the history of the project through photos and documents; the other projects the ongoing activities and processes. There is also a mud counter, built with ancestral knowledge, where botanical workshops and cooking practices take place. These actions are tools for imagining and constructing alternative ways of being in the world, within a collective experimentation space where art unfolds as a fluid process, in dialogue with multiple temporalities and territories.
