Talk – Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Siddharta Mitter – Exhibition, Publication, Afterlife: Looking Forward from the 36th Bienal

On January 10, the talk Exhibition, Publication, Afterlife: Looking Forward from the 36th Bienal will take place with Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Siddhartha Mitter. The event will be held from 2 pm to 3:30 pm in the Invocations space, on the second floor of the Pavilion. The conversation brings together the chief curator of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo and the editor-in-chief of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia for a discussion on curatorial and editorial projects and on how the legacy of exhibitions endures into the future. This event is supported by Latitude / ABACT.

Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is a curator, author and biotechnologist, currently serving as director and chief curator of Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) Berlin, Germany. He is the founder and former artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, as well as the artistic director of sonsbeek20->24, a quadrennial contemporary art exhibition in Arnhem, the Netherlands. He also worked as curator-at-large for Adam Szymczyk’s documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany in 2017 and was guest curator of the Dak’Art: African Contemporary Art Biennale in Dakar, Senegal, in 2018. Additionally, he served as the artistic director for the 12th and 13th editions of the Bamako Encounters – African Biennale of Photography in Mali, taking on this role in 2019 and 2022. Together with the Miracle Workers Collective, he curated the Finnish Pavilion at the 58th Biennale di Venezia, 2019. Prof. Dr. Ndikung was a guest professor in curatorial studies and sound art at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, and he is currently a professor and head of faculty in the Spatial Strategies Master’s program at the weißensee academy of art berlin. He was the recipient of the first OCAD University International Curators Residency fellowship in Toronto in 2020. His published works include, inter alia, The Delusions of Care (2021), An Ongoing-Offcoming Tale: Ruminations on Art, Culture, Politics and Us/Others (2022) and Pidginization as Curatorial Method (2023).

Siddhartha Mitter is a writer on contemporary art and its social and civic dimensions. He writes in-depth profiles of artists, reported features and reviews. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, covering artists and exhibitions across the United States and in Africa and Europe. He has written for Artforum, Art in America and many other publications within and beyond the art field. Trained in the social sciences, Siddhartha has worked in culture journalism for two decades. He received a Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant in 2017, delivered the AICA-USA Distinguished Critic lecture in 2022 and won a Rabkin Prize for art writing in 2024. He is based in New York City. He is the editor-in-chief of the curatorial team of the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

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Talk – Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Siddhartha Mitter – Exhibition, Publication, Afterlife: Looking Forward from the 36th Bienal
36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice
Jan 10, 2026
Sat, 2 pm
Invocations space, 2nd floor
Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion
Ibirapuera Park, gate 3
São Paulo, Brazil
free admission