CONVERSATION WITH Juliana Caffé and Juliana Gontijo
The ALT + SHIFT + COMM series returns after its August recess with Conversations in Gondwana, a curatorial collective and research platform founded by Brazilian curators Juliana Caffé and Juliana Gontijo, to discuss strategies for South-South exchange and collaboration.
Founded in 2017, Conversations in Gondwana develops experimental and horizontal processes with artists from different geographies to foster creative exchange and knowledge sharing through what decolonial semiotician Walter Mignolo defines as “critical border thinking.”
Recent projects include Fracture Zone, ISEA / University of Durban (South Africa, 2018); Conversations in Gondwana, São Paulo Cultural Center (Brazil, 2019); EAC Curatorial Residency (Uruguay, 2019).
https://conversationsingondwana.tumblr.com
Juliana Caffé is a curator and researcher on contemporary art. She is currently a doctoral student at the Postgraduate Program in Aesthetics and Art History at the University of São Paulo. She holds postgraduate specialisation in Curatorship from the University of Cape Town (South Africa); and in Art: History, Criticism and Curating from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. She worked at the Associação Cultural Videobrasil between 2013 and 2017. She has co-curated the Cambridge Artistic Residency, a project which puts forward artistic and cultural proposals in the Ocupação Hotel Cambridge, an occupied building in downtown São Paulo – Paulista Association of Art Critics winner project for Urban Appropriation. Selected curatorial works includes: the exhibitions How to Remain Silent? at the A4 Arts Foundation (Cape Town, 2017); From Silence to Memory at Paço das Artes (São Paulo, 2018); A Continent For Caliban at Factoría Habana (Havana, 2020)
Juliana Gontijo is a curator, researcher and associate professor of contemporary art at the Federal University of South Bahia. She has a PhD in History and Art Theory from the University of Buenos Aires. In addition, she graduated in Cinematographic Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University (Paris). In 2014, she published the book Technological Dystopias, winner of Funarte’s Scholarship to Stimulate Critical Production on Visual Arts. She is currently a collaborator to Artishock Review on Contemporary Art (Chile). As curator, the following projects stand out: Cildo Meireles: Cerca de Lejos (BIENALSUR, Cerrillos National Center for Contemporary Art, Santiago, Chile, 2019), winner of Chilean Art Critics Award for best international exhibition; Conversations in Gondwana (São Paulo Cultural Center, PROAC award. Co-curator Juliana Caffé); dura lex sed lex (BienalSur, Parque de España Cultural Center, Rosario, 2017. Co-curator Raphael Fonseca) and Instabilidade Estável (Paço das Artes, São Paulo, 2014).
