Archive the art, translate the archive:¿a research on the mistranslations of contemporary art (and its curating)

• Grant number: 25/08412-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: September 01, 2025
• End date: February 28, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Art Fundamentals and Criticism
• Principal Investigator: Vinicius Pontes Spricigo
• Grantee: Vinicius Pontes Spricigo
• Host Investigator: Felix Vogel
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universität Kassel, Germany

Abstract

My "archaeological" approach to recurring large scale art exhibitions is based on the history of the São Paulo Biennial. Over the last fifteen years, I have published extensively on the exhibition in Brazilian and international books and journals. Studying the Bienal has allowed me to put into critical perspective contemporary archival policies and curatorial approaches, as well as the geopolitics of knowledge inherent in existing genealogies in the field of exhibition history. In a critical way to the processes of rewriting and globalizing art history, in which curatorial and exhibition studies find a prominent place, the proposal for an archaeology focused on the origins and transformations of the biennial model and the emergence of the figure of the curator. In a way, this new proposal is based on the same premises, investigating the genealogies of contemporary art through Harald Szeemann's curatorial project for documenta 5. However, the change in the point of view adopted, starting from the exhibition that is perhaps one of the most studied and which assumes a central and canonical position in the current paradigm, reveals an interest in shedding new light on existing analyses of contemporary curatorial and archival practices. If today the work of curators serves both the paradigm of exhibitions and the historiography of contemporary art, archives are privileged places for a critical review of the narratives that are articulated around examples such as documenta 5. Therefore, a research stay at the documenta institut and the documenta archiv, as well as access to the remaining documenta 5 records in Kassel, represents a unique opportunity to continue and broaden the impact of my previous work, as well as opening up new prospects for research and international collaboration in the field of exhibition history. (AU)