Panorama Botijão da Arte Brasileira

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SSA

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Pivô is a non-profit art space providing a platform for exchange, critical thinking and artistic experimentation inside one of São Paulo’s most iconic modernist buildings, the Copan, projected by Oscar Niemeyer in the city’s central area. Since its inception, in 2012, the institution has enabled and facilitated projects by over two hundred artists and curators both local and international and in all career stages.

Its program is comprised by temporary exhibitions, new commissions, residencies, publications as well as discursive educational public programming, fostering a critical understanding of local and international most pressing issues in art and society. Our core mission is to create growing networks of exchange between artistic and cultural practitioners from different contexts and to provide an active meeting point for an emerging art scene in São Paulo.

Pivô’s activities are made possible through the generous support of a network of corporate and private sponsors and the remaining essential funding comes from grants, special editions developed by the artist in the program and its annual fundraising auction and benefit.

Pivô SP

Edifício Copan, loja 54
Avenida Ipiranga, 200
01046-925
São Paulo, Brasil

+55 (11) 3255-8703
contato@pivo.org.br

Pivô Salvador

Rua Boulevard Suíço, 11A
40301-110
Nazaré, Salvador
Bahia, Brasil

+55 (71) 4101-0540
+55 (71) 9402-0025
pivosalvador@pivo.org.br

New Memeseum

The Instagram profile @newmemeseum was created in late July 2020. One of the main motivations was the desire to reflect, with humor and irony, about the mechanisms adopted to survive in/on the art world, and also about the mechanisms that the art world imposes on us - at first sight, opaque and incomprehensible. Often, the memes created are about personal experiences. The @newmemeseum performed the virtual occupation Combater ficção com ficção in the project ofício:webat at Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo, which was on view from July to August 2021. Soon, it will inaugurate the occupation part of Pivô Satelitte's third edition, entitled Sex, Lies and Videotape, curated by Raphael Fonseca. Participating of Pivô Satellite #3

New Memeseum

Panorama Botijão da Arte Brasileira

29 OCT – 02 DEC

Satélite #3

Ending this cycle of occupations at Pivô Satélite, we host the museum that has stirred up Brazilian (and foreign) social media since its inauguration – or, so to speak, its first post – on July 31, 2020. In about a year and a half, New Memeseum has grown in the virtual architectures of social media and currently has nearly one hundred and fifty thousand followers. This museum's collection is unusual in terms of the status of art, but extremely common when it comes to how Brazilians use social networks: memes are their objects of attention, safeguarding and dissemination. The perspective of the management team of this museum is very precise; the anonymous agents behind the page are interested in reflecting specifically on the relationship between humor and the absurdities of the visual arts systems in Brazil.

As the great Daniel Santiago wrote in 1982, “Brazil is my abyss”. It is through this mountain range of constant falls that visual arts professionals in Brazil travel – especially those who inherited trauma and no material possessions. In this occupation of Pivô Satélite’s space, New Memeseum’s managers turned their attention to an asset that affects the Brazilian population at the moment: cooking gas cylinders. Based on an open call via Instagram and its usual surgical view, the museum presents a collection of images of cooking gas cylinders decorated by hand in a myriad of stiles. Mixed with these images, phrases and memes problematize the rising prices of this object that is so essential for the country’s domestic economy.

This occupation is based, therefore, on a mosaic of images, phrases and situations that dance according to the absurdities orchestrated by the Brazilian government in recent years. The cooking gas cylinder thus becomes an icon, a problem and ready-made. Those who laugh last laugh best? That’s what they say, but when it comes to the visual arts working class – which also suffers from the prices hikes in cooking gas cylinders, let’s not forget – crying and laughter seem to become one and the same. Let us cry, then.