'Memory burns. This is the overarching feeling at the 35th edition of the São Paulo Bienal, where collective memory is represented as both an endlessly fading and reemerging encounter within each artwork. This year’s Bienal, which opened to the public on September 6th and runs through December 10th, boasts one of the largest selection of artists to date: A staggering 121 names in total have work incorporated into the main pavilion at the Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo, the official headquarters of the Foundação Bienal de São Paulo since 1957.
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Additionally, Citra Sasmita’s immense figurative paintings on cowhide and canvas, made in the Indonesian Kamasan style, mythologize the terrors and tension surrounding femme bodies of color in the world and their never-ending fight for bodily autonomy. The rich, violent hues of crimson across the cowhide stand out and reveal shocking violence beneath the seemingly superficial, flat style. Sasmita’s work is one of the Bienal’s stunning discoveries.'
