The Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and the Museu Nacional da Cultura Afro-Brasileira (MUNCAB) present the Salvador edition of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo’s traveling exhibitions program, Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice, opening on September 5 and on view through November 29, 2026. The exhibition in Salvador is supported by Motiva and Petrobras.
Curated by Keyna Eleison and Thiago de Paula Souza, cocurators of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, the selection for Salvador brings together works by Alberto Pitta, Antonio Társis, Berenice Olmedo, Christopher Cozier, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Leo Asemota, Manauara Clandestina, Márcia Falcão, Marlene Almeida, Ming Smith, Myrlande Constant, Nádia Taquary, Sharon Hayes, and Théodore Diouf.
The choice of MUNCAB as the venue is closely connected to the curatorial proposal of the 36th edition. Many of the artists in the exhibition have roots in Salvador itself. Antonio Társis, born in Arraial do Retiro, presents catástrofe orquestra #1 (Ato I) (2024–2025), an installation featuring drums, charcoal, and matchboxes as a critique of colonial extractivism. Alberto Pitta is represented by screen-printed textiles that create a graphic visual language drawing on Afro-diasporic repertoires, everyday experiences, celebrations, and narratives of Black culture.
Nádia Taquary, who was born and is based in Salvador, presents Irókó: A árvore cósmica (2025), an installation made of beads and cotton inspired by the first sacred tree in Yoruba cosmology, which represents the cycle of life and the lord of time. “This traveling exhibition was made with great warmth and desire, thinking about humanity as a practice, through a poetics that could unfold in a territory so rich in living poetry. There is also a curiosity that is an act of love: Irókó, a work by Nádia Taquary commissioned for the 36th edition, now returns to its place of origin. The piece was made in Salvador, and bringing it back is something that cannot be expressed in words alone,” says Keyna Eleison.
The exhibition also includes works by international artists such as Myrlande Constant, whose beaded and sequined works rethink the tradition of drapo vodou (flags); Berenice Olmedo, with the pneumatic installation Pnoê (2025), which brings together obsolete medical devices around questions of the body and vulnerability; and Théodore Diouf, whose paintings and works on paper engage with African geometric abstraction.
Ming Smith, the first Black woman photographer to have works acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, comes to MUNCAB with more than fifty photographs spanning decades of the Black diaspora, from Harlem to Africa. They range from the Invisible Man series, depicting everyday life in New York in the 1980s and 1990s, to images from the Jazz series featuring Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, and Billy Higgins.
“The traveling exhibitions program was created with the conviction that the Bienal de São Paulo does not end when the Pavilion closes its doors, and that it is essential to extend its reach by bringing selections from the main exhibition to audiences who might otherwise not have access to it,” says Andrea Pinheiro, president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo. “Welcoming MUNCAB as a partner in this project for the first time is another step in this process of expanding and democratizing access to art,” she adds.
For MUNCAB, hosting the 36th Bienal de São Paulo’s traveling exhibition means bringing its curatorial proposition into dialogue with a museum-territory whose very existence questions the ways in which art history has constructed presences, absences, centers, and silences. “As a territory of belonging, the Museu Nacional da Cultura Afro-Brasileira is not simply the place where the exhibition takes place, but an active part of the relationships it creates. It allows for new ways of approaching and reading the works, producing new meanings in Salvador,” says Cintia Maria, MUNCAB’s general director.
The 36th Bienal exhibition is traveling across Brazil and internationally throughout 2026. Selections from the main exhibition have already been presented in Goiânia, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Brasília, Santos, Fortaleza, Recife, and São José do Rio Preto. Upcoming destinations include Salvador, Belém, Belo Horizonte, and Vitória, as well as international stops in Santiago, Berlin, and Mexico City.
Presented as a program since 2011, the traveling exhibitions have become a fundamental extension of the Bienal de São Paulo, allowing works and discussions presented at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion to be reconfigured in dialogue with diverse local contexts, activating new readings and relationships with audiences beyond the main exhibition venue. The 36th Bienal, held in São Paulo from September 2025 to January 2026, welcomed 784,399 visitors to the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion.
This is the third time that Salvador has hosted the program. The city previously received the Bienal in 2011, during the 29th edition, and in 2024, with the 35th edition, both at the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia (MAM-BA). It is the first time the exhibition is presented at MUNCAB, a museum dedicated to preserving and promoting Afro-Brazilian culture and history.
In addition to the circulation of artworks, the traveling exhibitions program includes a transversal educational component, with training for local teams, online and in-person meetings, pedagogical support, and activities for different audiences, including guided visits, talks, workshops for teachers, and educational activities for students.
Service
36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice
chief curator: Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
co-curators: Alya Sebti, Anna Roberta Goetz, Thiago de Paula Souza
co-curator at large: Keyna Eleison
strategy and communications advisor: Henriette Gallus
deputy co-curators: André Pitol, Leonardo Matsuhei
Salvador traveling exhibition – Museu Nacional da Cultura Afro-Brasileira (MUNCAB)
curators: Thiago de Paula Souza and Keyna Eleison
exhibition design: Gisele de Paula
September 5 – November 29, 2026
Tue–Sun, 10am–5pm
last admission: 4:30pm
tickets
general admission: R$20
reduced admission: R$10
get your ticket online through Sympla
free admission on Wednesdays and Sundays
Museu Nacional da Cultura Afro-Brasileira (MUNCAB)
Rua das Vassouras, 25
Salvador, Brazil