Exhibitions
Latin America looks at itself at the MASP in São Paulo
The Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) will dedicate its 2026 curatorial cycle to exploring the complex construction of Latin American identity with Latin American Histories , a major collective exhibition that will occupy the five floors of the Pietro Maria Bardi building from September 4, 2026 to January 31, 2027.
The exhibition is curated by Amanda Carneiro, curator at MASP, and Julieta González, the museum's general curator, with the assistance of curatorial assistant Teo Teotonio. The project stems from a central question: how the very idea of Latin America was constructed, transformed, and also questioned over time.
Organized into five main sections, the exhibition offers a journey through different historical moments and processes that have defined the region. It begins with colonization and its violent processes of exploitation and resource extraction, then analyzes how Baroque art and the construction of the imagery of the tropical paradise contributed to disseminating and consolidating colonial power through imagery.
From this perspective, Latin American Histories also addresses how these structures conditioned the arrival of modernity to the region, but at the same time incorporates alternative narratives and different forms of resistance to the dominant discourses.
One of the exhibition's central themes will be dedicated to the community-based forms of organization developed by Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. The exhibition will highlight experiences such as quilombos, palenques, and cumbes—spaces of resistance and collective construction that offer insights into alternative ways of understanding society, autonomy, and coexistence.
The exhibition will also delve into utopian traditions that have emerged in response to authoritarianism. In this context, the project will focus on movements such as Zapatismo, understood as one of the contemporary expressions of political and social resistance that have arisen in Latin America.
Another major theme will be the movement of people, goods, and rhythms through migration and diaspora processes. These movements have forged deep connections between Latin America and other regions of the world, contributing to the creation of new identities, cultural exchanges, and forms of belonging.
The exhibition will conclude with a look at Indigenous conceptions of endings and renewal. In the face of present-day crises, the exhibition thus proposes the possibility of imagining alternative futures and recovering ways of thinking capable of placing transformation, continuity, and renewal at the heart of the debate.
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