Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Julieta González, and Luiza Proença

By framing contemporary artists’ work in relation to that of Lina Bo Bardi, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo aims to recover the legacies of this Brazilian architect, who designed the museum’s current home and who advocated a social vision of democracy and multiplicity. MASP recently reconstructed Bo Bardi’s iconic glass easel display for its collection, and with the title “Playgrounds,” the curators allude to the institution’s homonymous 1969 exhibition, which—as this show promises to do—took the ludic dimension of Bo Bardi’s thinking as a point of reference. Among the six participating artists and artist collectives are Yto Barrada, Céline Condorelli, and Ernesto Neto. One hopes that the “play” proposed by the artists’ installations, performances, and workshops will revive—especially in the face of Brazil’s current ecological and economic crises—an image of the collective life Bo Bardi imagined.

— Kaira M. Cabañas