Symposium Bispo Do Rosario: All Existing Materials on Earth

Antonio Sergio Bessa is chief curator emeritus at The Bronx Museum, which he joined in 2003. From 2006 to 2016, he was an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, where he taught Museum Education Issues. A scholar of concrete poetry, Bessa has organized several critically acclaimed exhibitions on themes related to text-based art, and his essays on concrete poetry have been published in several anthologies, journals, and websites. He is the author of Öyvind Fahlström: The Art of Writing (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2009), and editor of Novas: Selected Writings of Haroldo de Campos (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2007, in collaboration with Odile Cisneros), and Mary Ellen Solt: Toward a Theory of Concrete Poetry (Stockholm: OEI, 2010). At The Bronx Museum, he organized several exhibitions including Joan Semmel: The Lucid Eye (2013), Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (2015); Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect (2017), and The Life and Times of Alvin Baltrop (2019). ​​

Kaira M. Cabañas is associate dean for Academic Programs and Publications at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (The Center) at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. She is the author of multiple volumes, including Immanent Vitalities: Meaning and Materiality in Modern and Contemporary Art (2021), which received the Frank Jewett Mather Award from the College Art Association; and Learning from Madness: Brazilian Modernism and Global Contemporary Art (2018), which was a finalist for the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize. She is currently at work on a book titled Deviant Art Histories: From Radical Psychiatry to Cultural Citizenship.

Roberto Conduru is an endowed distinguished professor of art history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Conduru’s research addresses modern and contemporary art and architecture in Brazil, with an emphasis on Afro-Brazilian art, as well as constructivist art and architecture. His interests also encompass global art history and current debates in the visual cultures of Latin America and the trans-Atlantic world. Conduru is the author of Pérolas Negras – Primeiros Fios (EdUERJ, 2013) and Arte Afro-Brasileira (C/Arte, 2007), and co-author of Arte no Brasil no Século XIX (Barléu, 2020) and Architecture Agouda au Bénin et au Togo (Edições Fotorio, 2016). Conduru has served as a curator on exhibitions including Quilombo do Rosário (Museu Bispo do Rosário Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro, 2018) and Incorporation—Afro-Brazilian Contemporary Art (Centrale Electrique, Brussels, 2011), and co-curator of Axé Bahia: The Power of Art in an Afro-Brazilian Metropolis (Fowler Museum UCLA, 2017) and Perles de Liberté—Bijoux Afro-Brésiliens (Grand Hornu Images, Hornu, 2011). He received a bachelor's in architecture from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and a PhD in history from Universidade Federal Fluminense in Brazil. 

Lynne Cooke is senior curator for special projects in modern art at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. From 2012-2014 she was the Andrew W. Mellon professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art. Prior to that she served as chief curator and deputy director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid from 2008 to 2012 and as curator at Dia Art Foundation from 1991 to 2008. In 1991, Cooke co-curated the Carnegie International and has helmed numerous major shows since, including the 10th Biennale of Sydney (1996), Rosemarie Trockel: Cosmos (2012) and Outliers and American Vanguard Art, 2018. Her latest exhibition project is Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, which explores intersections, alignments, and affiliations between abstract artists, textile makers, and designers over the past century. It is scheduled for fall 2023. She has also contributed texts to numerous exhibition catalogues and art journals. 

Massimiliano Gioni is the Edlis Neeson artistic director of the New Museum in New York where he has curated numerous exhibitions including solo shows by John Akomfrah, Lynda Benglis, Nicole Eisenman, Theaster Gates, Hans Haacke, Kapwani Kiwanga, Ragnar Kjartansson, Sarah Lucas, Marta Minujin, Albert Oehlen, Chris Ofili, Raymond Pettibon, Carol Rama, Faith Ringgold, Pipilotti Rist, Anri Sala, Peter Saul, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Nari Ward, and many others. At the New Museum, he has also organized numerous group shows including Ghosts in the Machine, The Keeper, Ostalgia, and was part of the curatorial team that supervised the realization of Okwui Enwezor's posthumous exhibition Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America. Gioni is also the director of the Trussardi Foundation, which organizes exhibitions and art projects in public spaces, symbolic locations, and forgotten palazzos in the city of Milan. He has organized numerous international exhibitions including: Manifesta 5 (2004, with Marta Kuzma), the 6th Berlin Biennale (with Maurizio Cattelan and Ali Subotnick), the 1st New Museum Triennial (with Lauren Cornell and Laura Hoptman), the 8th Gwangju Biennale (2010), the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), The Great Mother on the occasion of the International Expo in Milan (2015), and The Restless Earth at the Milan Triennale (2017). Recent international exhibitions include George Condo: The Picture Gallery at the Long Museum in Shanghai (2021), Jeff Koons: Lost in America at Al Riwaq in Doha, Qatar (2021), and Dark Light: Realism in the Age of Post-Truths at the Aishti Foundation in Beirut, Lebanon. 

Aimé Iglesias Lukin is an art historian and curator. Born and raised in Buenos Aires, she has lived in New York since 2011. Her PhD in art history from Rutgers University, titled “This Must Be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York 1965–1975,” became a show at Americas Society in 2021. She completed her master's at The Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and her undergraduate studies in art history at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Her research received grants from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Terra and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations, and the ICAA Peter C. Marzio Award from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her writing has been presented at conferences internationally and published by prestigious museums and academic journals, including the New Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim Museum. She curated exhibitions independently in museums and cultural centers and previously worked in the Modern and Contemporary Art Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, and Fundación Proa in Buenos Aires. 

Silvana Jeha holds a PhD in history from PUC-Rio. She researches and writes about marginalized populations in Brazil, such as artists who live in mental health institutions, indigenous people, enslaved people, sailors, prostitutes, and their visual cultures such as tattooing. She is the author of Uma história da tatuagem no Brasil: Do Século XIX à década de 1970 [A History of Tattoos in Brazil: From the 19th century to the 1970s] (Veneta, 2019). and the co-author, with Joel Birman, of Aurora: Memórias e delirios de uma mulher da vida [Aurora: memories and deliriums of a lady of the night] (Veneta, 2022). The book is about artwork by Aurora Cursino dos Santos (1896-1959) produced while she was hospitalized at the Juquery Psychiatric Hospital. Jeha is writing a book about Arthur Bispo do Rosario and a script for a graphic novel about Cais do Valongo, the port in Rio de Janeiro where around 500,000 enslaved Africans disembarked in the 19th century, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

Tie Jojima is assistant curator at Americas Society and a PhD Candidate in Art History at the Graduate Center, CUNY, specializing in modern and contemporary Latin American art. At Americas Society she has co-curated the exhibition Geles Cabrera: Museo Escultórico (2022) and has worked on the organization of exhibitions and their corresponding publications, including Tropical is Political: Caribbean Art Under the Visitor Economy Regime and This Must Be The Place: Latin American Artists in New York, 1965-75. She published her academic and curatorial writings at ISLAA’s journal Vistas: Critical Approaches to Latin American Art, Americas Society, and Arte & Ensaios, among others.

Lisette Lagnado (1961, Kinshasa, R.D.C.) is an art critic, editor and independent curator based in São Paulo, Brazil. She studied communication and semiotics and holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Universidade de São Paulo. In 1993, she co founded and coordinated the Projeto Leonilson, which resulted in the first monographic publication of the artist after his death, Leonilson. So Many Are the Truths (1995). She also organized the archives of the artist Hélio Oiticica available since 2000 at a website hosted by Itaú Cultural. She co-curated the 11th Berlin Biennale (“The Crack Begins Within”, 2019-2020), together with Agustín Perez-Rubio, María Berrios, and Renata Cervetto. Selected exhibitions include: Parable of Progress at Sesc Pompeia (São Paulo, 2022-2023), the 33 Panorama of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2013), Drifts and derivations (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2010), the 27th Bienal de São Paulo (“How to Live Together”, 2006), and more. From 2001 to 2010, she co-edited the online magazine Trópico with Alcino Leite and Esther Hamburger—selected by Platform Magazines at documenta 12. Between 2014-2017, she directed the Escola de Artes Visuais of Parque Lage (Rio de Janeiro) and its public programs. She co-coordinated a course of post-studies in curatorial practices and cultural management at Faculdade Santa Marcelina (2007-2012) with Prof. Mirtes Marins de Oliveira. She has published essays on Mira Schendel, Marepe, Rivane Neuenschwander, Laura Lima, and Arthur Bispo do Rosario, among others.

Bernardo Mosqueira is a curator, writer, and researcher based in New York City. He is the founder and artistic director of Solar dos Abacaxis, Rio de Janeiro (since 2015); the ISLAA Curatorial Fellow at the New Museum, New York (since 2021); and director of Prêmio FOCO ArtRio, Rio de Janeiro (since 2012). Mosqueira was a curator at Galeria de Arte IBEU (2011-2015), and organized the performance festival Vênus Terra (2011-2014). In 2017, he received the Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi per l’Arte, an international award for curators, organized by GAMeC, in Bergamo, Italy. Mosqueira holds a masters in curatorial studies (CCS Bard, 2021). 

Rodrigo Moura is a writer, editor, and curator. He worked in Brazilian institutions such as Museu de Arte de São Paulo and Instituto Inhotim. He currently lives in New York, where he serves as a chief curator at El Museo del Barrio. 

Adele Nelson is an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also serves as Associate Director of the Center for Latin American Visual Studies. She is the author of Forming Abstraction: Art and Institutions in Postwar Brazil (2022) and co-organizer of the exhibition Social Fabric: Art and Activism in Contemporary Brazil (Visual Arts Center at UT Austin, 2022), which received The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Grant. Her writing has appeared in international magazines and academic journals, and she has contributed to numerous museum publications, among them Lygia Pape: Tecelares (2023); Lygia Clark: Painting as an Experimental Field, 1948–1958 (2020), Mário Pedrosa: De la naturaleza afectiva de la forma (2017), and Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium (2016). 

Luis Pérez-Oramas received his PhD in art history under the direction of Louis Marin and Hubert Damisch at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France, in 1993. In 2003 Luis Pérez-Oramas became Adjunct Curator in the Department of Drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; in 2006, he was appointed The Estrellita Brodsky curator of Latin American Art at MoMA, a position that he held until 2017. Prior to MoMA, Pérez-Oramas was professor of art history at the Université de Haute Bretagne-Rennes 2, France (1987-1991); Ecole Régionale Superieure des Beaux Arts de Nantes, France (1992-1994); and the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Artes Plásticas Armando Reverón, Caracas, Venezuela (1994-2002), as well as Curator of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Caracas (1994-2002). In addition, Pérez-Oramas served as the Chief Curator of the Thirtieth São Paulo Biennial, The Imminence of Poetics, in 2012. He is the author of several exhibition catalogues, seven volumes of essays on art, politics and social issues, and eight titles based on his poetry, among them most recently Animal vesperal (Valencia: Pre-Textos, 2022) and La (in)actualidad de la pintura y vericuetos de la imagen (Valencia: Pre-textos, 2021). Since 2017 he has served as curatorial advisor to the Hochschild Correa Collection of Latin American Art, Lima, Perú, and since 2019 he has served as as curatorial advisor for the Nara Roesler group of galleries in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and New York. He currently lives and works in New York. 

Ricardo Resende holds a master's in Art History from the School of Communications and Arts of the Universidade de São Paulo (ECA/USP) and, since 1988, has worked in various positions in institutions such as the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC/USP), the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM/SP), the Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Centro Dragão do Mar de Arte e Cultura (MAC Dragão do Mar), the Centro de Artes Visuais of Funarte/MinC, in Rio de Janeiro, and Centro Cultural São Paulo (CCSP). Since 2014, he has served as curator of the Museu Bispo do Rosario Arte Contemporânea (mBrac), in Rio de Janeiro. He was the curator of the exhibitions Panorama da Arte Brasileira de 2001, at Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; Leonilson: sob o peso dos meus amores [Leonilson: under the weight of my loves], held at Itaú Cultural, São Paulo and Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre; and Leonilson: memória e arquivo [Leonilson: memory and archive], held at Fundação Edson Queiroz, Fortaleza and Centro Cultural Ruth Cardoso, São Paulo. His latest exhibition was Bispo do Rosario Eu Vim: aparição, impregnação e impacto [Bispo do Rosario - I came: apparition, impregnation and impact], held at Itaú Cultural. 

Tania Rivera is a psychoanalyst and essayist. She works within a multidisciplinary critical reflection on the imbrication between subject and culture, connecting the fields of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and artistic and literary theory and practice. Her main interest is to collect and unfold proposals for outlining the subject in culture at a micropolitical level, trying to contribute to discussions of gender and sexuality and the decolonization of thought. Rivera earned her PhD in psychology at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium (1996), Rivera is a full professor in the Department of Art at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro. She worked as a visiting professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Université Paris 8, Vincennes Saint-Denis in 2016. She received the Jabuti Prize in the category of Psychology / Psychoanalysis (2014) for the book O Avesso do Imaginário, Arte Contemporânea e Psicanálise [The Reverse Imaginary, Contemporary Art and Psychoanalysis] (Cosac Naify, 2013). Her most recent book is Lugares do Delírio - Arte e Expressão, Loucura e Política [Places of Delirium—Art and Expression, Madness and Politics] (n-1 Editors, in press). Rivera has also worked as curator of the exhibition Lugares do Delírio [Places of Delirium] at the Rio Art Museum, 2017 and Sesc Pompeia, 2018. 

Dr. Phil Thomas Röske (born 1962) has been head of the Prinzhorn collection of the Psychiatric University Clinic in Heidelberg since 2002. He studied art history, musicology, and psychology at Hamburg University and obtained his doctorate in 1991 with a book about Hans Prinzhorn. He was assistant professor at the Department of Art History of Frankfurt University from 1993 to 1999, and from 1996 to 1999 the second speaker of the Graduate Programme "Psychic Energies of Visual Art" there. In 2015, he qualified for a professorship at Frankfurt University. He now teaches art history alternately there and at Heidelberg University. He has published mainly on German Modernism and Outsider Art. Since 2012, he has been the president of the European Outsider Art Association. His presentation title is "The Relevance of Hans Prinzhorn’s Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1922) after a Hundred Years“. 

Valérie Rousseau, PhD is curatorial chair for Exhibitions and Senior Curator at the American Folk Art Museum, New York. She overviewed critically acclaimed exhibitions, notably Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered (2022), Photo|Brut: Collection Bruno Decharme & Compagnie (2021), Art Brut in America: The Incursion of Jean Dubuffet (2015), Willem van Genk: Mind Traffic (2014), the AAMC award-winning When the Curtain Never Comes Down (2015), as well as projects on psychiatrist Francesc Tosquelles, art brut literature, art environments, Henry Darger, Eugen Gabritschevsky, Paa Joe, and Melvin Way. She authored the FILAF-winning publication Bill Traylor (2018), The Fate of Self-Taught Art (The Brooklyn Rail, 2018), and Visionary Architectures (Alternative Guide to the Universe, Hayward Gallery, 2013). In 2022, she was selected to attend the seminar “Showing/Searching: art brut and its archival impulse” of the Bibliothèque Kandinsky Summer University at Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2019, she was the recipient of the Curatorial Fellowship for American Curators, “Étant Donnés Contemporary Art” of the FACE Foundation, on the concomitance of psychiatric and artistic avant-gardes. 

Javier Téllez is a Venezuelan-born, NYC-based artist and curator. His work brings peripheral communities and invisible situations to the fore of contemporary art and often involves people diagnosed with mental illness to produce film installations that question the notions of the normal and the pathological. He has had solo exhibitions at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester (2018), San Francisco Art Institute (2014), Kunsthaus Zürich (2014), Stedelijk Museum (2013), Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2011), The Bronx Museum of the Arts (2005), and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (2004). He has curated projects such as Los de arriba y los de abajo at Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City (2009), Hommage to K.F. Drenthe. Works from the collection of Dr. Guislain Museum at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent (2013), and The Doors of Perception in collaboration with The Outsider Art Fair for Frieze New York (2019). He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999 and the Global Mental Health Award for Innovation in the Arts from Columbia University in 2016.