Activation – Templo da Água: Rio Tietê – Werebere Group (Leonel Vásquez and Esmeralda Ramírez)
On September 7, the first Sunday of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice, there will be an activation of the work Templo da Água: Rio Tietê (2025) by Leonel Vásquez. It will take place together with Esmeralda Ramírez. Together, the artists form the group Werebere. The event will be held from 10:30 am to 11:30 pm at the artist’s work, on the second floor.
Understanding listening as the foundation for encounters and agreements between living beings, Templo da água: rio Tietê emerges. Within the temple, the sounds and vibrations of life, along with the invisible connections that sustain the fragile balance of the world, are amplified. This space fosters a meeting between the beings of the earth and the beings of the water, opening us to the river—and to the world itself—through the profound act of listening. Can we feel and listen to the Tietê River today? Templo da água: rio Tietê calls us to practice deep listening, which, beyond being a poetic gesture, encourages an ethical shift in our relationship with the Tietê. It is an eco somatic awakening—an invitation to attune ourselves to the river and share an experience of resonance that has the power to transform how we connect with the world and reimagine humanity’s practices within it.
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Werebere group, formed by Leonel Vásquez and Esmeralda Ramírez, has been deeply engaged in the pedagogy of listening as a political act, the appropriation of the body’s sonic condition, and the expanded perception of living environments, deciphering their sounds as urgent messages that call for the care of life. This practice has been developed over more than fourteen years through research, projects, and commissions by the Ministry of Culture, cultural centers, civil society organizations, and in exploration and sound creation laboratories carried out with rural communities, artisans, environmentalists, children, and ethnic groups across different regions of the country. In their creative facet, their work has focused on forms of communication and expression between humans and the natural world, based on the study of different bodies, their phonic systems, and the transits and effects of vibration. They have developed research on resonance phenomena and the physical-acoustic aspects of subtle landscape signals, which has resulted in an inventory of amphibious experimental lutherie objects combined with techniques for transitioning and releasing vibration into the human body as a sonic organism.
Leonel Vásquez (Sibaté, 1981) is a sound and visual artist whose work explores the power of sound to shape sensory experiences through sculptures and installations. He investigates listening as a political, aesthetic, and reparative act, rebuilding connections in contexts of social and environmental conflict.
This participation is supported by Casa Hoffmann.
Esmeralda Ramírez holds a degree in Music from the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. She works with the voice and its different forms of expression; she researches in ancestral songs the connection and the principle of vibration originating from the sounding body. Her creative interests are framed within the study of expanded voice developed in academic, pedagogical, and traditional contexts. Ramírez explores the voice as a medium integrating worlds. From there stems her participation in different projects, with artists and broad perspectives that go beyond the commonplace of music. Her professional experience has impacted processes involving the body, listening, and the voice as binding channels.
Service
Activation – Templo da Água: Rio Tietê – Werebere Group (Leonel Vásquez and Esmeralda Ramírez)
36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice
September 7, 2025
Sunday, 10:30 am
Work of Leonel Vásquez, second floor
Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion
Ibirapuera Park, Gate 3
Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral, s/n
São Paulo, SP
free admission
