IN THEIR INTRODUCTION to the catalogue for this year’s São Paulo Bienal, the exhibition’s seven-member curatorial collective make a statement that is sure to arouse a measure of ambivalence, to say the least: “Beyond all scientific or economic arguments,” they write, “recognition of the power of faith and ritual to change normative responses runs throughout the 31st Bienal.” In making such an assertion concerning the power of faith, the collective, which consists of Galit Eilat, Nuria Enguita Mayo, Charles Esche, Pablo Lafuente, Luiza Proença, Oren Sagiv, and Benjamin Seroussi, is clearly informed

Upon entering the gallery’s warehouse space during the opening of this exhibition, the visitor was greeted by the sound of an unusual chant and the smell of home-cooked food. The aroma was of traditional Brazilian fare offered visitors in a family-style banquet setting. The sound came from a video installation shot entirely in the dark, making it a work to hear rather than see: Aprender a rezar Guarani e Kaiowá para o mundo nao acabar (Learn to Pray Guarani and Kaiowá So the World Doesn’t End), 2013. The work documents the ceremony in which the artist, a Brazilian from Minas Gerais, of mixed

“He doesn’t belong to cliques / He paints what he feels like painting / Amen.” Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato (1900–1995) wrote this prayer on the reverse side of an untitled painting from 1948. And indeed, Lorenzato was an artist who just seemed to follow his heart, with little regard for conventions of genre or style. This exhibition of the self-taught painter’s work, curated by artists Alexandre da Cunha and Rivane Neuenschwander, included an assortment of: still lifes, rural and semi-urban landscapes, as well as fully abstract compositions. The two works that opened the show announced that the