Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung Appointed Chief Curator of 2025 Bienal de SÃo Paulo

The organizers of the Bienal de São Paulo have announced polymathic curator and author Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung as chief curator of the event’s thirty-sixth edition, to take place in the second half of 2025. The Cameroonian-born Ndikung since January 2023 has served asdirector and chief curatorof Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin. Ndikung, who holds a doctorate degree in medical biotechnology and a postdoc degree in biophysics, is also a professor in the spatial strategies master’s program at Berlin’s Weißensee Academy of Art.

“To say that I am happy to be appointed chief curator of Bienal de São Paulo would be an understatement,” said Ndikung in a statement, further describing himself as “thrilled, honored and humbled” to have been chosen to lead the event. “Bienal de São Paulo is not only one of the oldest and most important biennials in the world, but as one of the very few free-admission biennials, it has proven in the past seventy-three years to be a biennialofandforthe people,” he continued. “With its pathbreaking exhibitions, public and pedagogical programs, the Bienal de São Paulo has succeeded in bringing art to varying communities and demographic groups. Despite the challenges that biennials are facing around the world, they still serve as important barometers for measuring the sociopolitical pressures of the world. The Bienal de São Paulo seems to me to be a seismograph that not only records the different tremblements the world is experiencing socioeconomically, geopolitically and environmentally, but these records also give us the possibilities of shaping a more just, humanitarian future for all animate and inanimate beings on this planet. I am not only looking forward to continuing my long-term research in Abya Yala at large and Brazil in particular, but also to connecting my current practices as director, pedagogue and curator across geographies.”

Before decamping for HKW, Ndikung was founding director of noted Berlin gallery Savvy Contemporary, which he established in 2009. In 2020, he was awarded the Order of Merit of Berlin, the city-state’s highest honor, for his contribution to the local arts scene through the gallery. Ndikung is also an experienced biennial curator. In 2022 and 2019, he served as artistic director of Bamako Encounters: The African Biennale of Photography in Mali. He was artistic director of the 2020 Sonsbeek international contemporary art exhibition in the Netherlands and in 2019 cocurated Finland’s pavilion at the Fifty-Eighth Venice Biennale. In 2017, he was curator at large for Adam Szymczyk’s much-talked-about Documenta 14. 

“In his curatorial work, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung acts as a driving force that challenges boundaries and contributes to shaping the future of global contemporary art,” said Andrea Pinheiro, president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, in a statement. “I am sure that the Thirty-Sixth Bienal de São Paulo will continue to play its provocative role and be attentive to current issues, continuing the developments brought about by our most recent editions.”

The theme for the Bienal will be announced at a later date.