Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro is the curator of the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo, slated to take place in 2018. The organization has yet to officially confirm the appointment, but the paper Brasileiros broke the story last week.
Born in Spain and educated in Britain, Pérez-Barreiro is currently the director and chief curator of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, based in New York and Caracas.
In 1996, Pérez-Barreiro received a PhD in Art History and Theory by the University of Essex in the UK, where he was founding curator of its collection of Latin American art.
He was later director of visual arts at New York’s Americas Society, before being appointed, in 2002, curator of Latin American art at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, in Austin. In 2007, he was chief curator of the 6th Mercosur Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Pérez-Barreiro is succeeding Jochen Volz, who curated the 32nd edition of the Bienal, titled “Live uncertainty” and which explored the timely subjects of chaos and uncertainty. Volz is curating the Brazilian Pavilion in Venice this year.
The ambitious exhibition featured 340 works by over 80 artists and collectives spread over three floors at the famous Oscar Niemeyer-designed pavilion in São Paulo’s Ibirapuera Park.