How To Talk About Biennials That Don’t Exist: Reassembling the 12th Bienal de São Paulo (1973)

The twelfth São Paulo Biennial (1973) was an under-documented exhibition that lacked unifying coherence and received little critical attention. The collective proposals published within its catalogue, however, articulate a history of creative resistance to the Brazilian regime. Arguing for the need to pay greater attention to non-exemplary exhibitions, and drawing from archival research and interviews, this article situates this biennial within its institutional context and re-assemble the relationship between the proposals and the concerns of their time.