Exhibition | Parable of Progress at Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo

October 26, 2022 - April 02, 2023

Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo

'Parable of Progress' opens at Sesc Pompeia on October 26, 2022, on the occasion of the space’s 40th anniversary. Curated by Lisette Lagnado, alongside adjunct curators André Pitol and Yudi Rafael, the exhibition takes as its organizing principle the cultural center’s Área de Convivência (Living Space)—whose conception, under architect Lina Bo Bardi’s renovation, was informed by care, sensitivity and conviviality—to raise utopian values that underlie collective efforts to “build another reality.” The curators explain that this expression summarizes Bo Bardi’s thinking since her experience of living in Bahia, between 1958 and 1964; and later, when she created the Casa do Benin (House of Benin) and deepened her relationship with Brazil’s African heritage. The “civilization” the architect sought so much to define, based on what is conventionally called the “Northeast,” is one of the themes of the show, aggregating multiple identities and territories, despite the extractivist and obliterating endeavors in and against the region.