In this text, Nelson Aguilar, chief curator of the XXIII São Paulo Biennial (1996), justifies his choice of the theme Universalis: a desmaterialização da arte for the event. He argues that the perseverance of art at the end of the second millennium is due to its emancipation from a past based on vision. Crucial to that process are Duchamp’s readymades, though earlier precedents include Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian, both of whom manifested the desire for suppression in their work. The late sixties and early seventies witnessed a great many artistic formulations that radically contested the materiality of art (Minimalism, Conceptualism, arte povera, fluxus, land art, performance, and others). For Universalis, Aguilar invited curators from a number of different nations to select artists and works that interrogate from different perspectives the anti-material tendency of contemporary production. The international curatorial team consisted of Tadayasu Sakai, Jean-Hubert Martin, Mari Carmen Ramírez, Paul Schimmel, Katalin Néray, Achile Bonito Oliva, and Agnaldo Farias.

The chief curator of the 23rd edition of the São Paulo Biennial, and of the 22nd edition, was art historian Nelson Aguilar; the adjunct curator was Agnaldo Farias. The idea of the “dematerialization of art” chosen as the theme for the biennial was taken from the book Six Years: The Dematerialization of Art Object from1966 to 1972 (New York: Praeger, 1973) by North American art critic Lucy R. Lippard (b. 1937) in conjunction with John Chamberlain. Lippard first came into contact with the idea of the dematerialization of art at lectures by theorist Oscar Masotta that she attended during a visit to Argentina in 1968. Indeed, starting in 1966, groups like Arte de los Medios (Jacoby, Costa, and Escari) had been active in that country. In an apparent paradox, Aguilar asserts that the dematerialization of the art object should not be seen as incompatible with the market. He states, “I organized this biennial to prove that the market has not put an end to art; the market is, rather, a consequence of it.”

The curators of the event were Tadayasu Sakai (Japan, b. 1941), Jean-Hubert Martin (France, b. 1944), Mari Carmen Ramírez (Puerto Rico, b. 1955), Paul Schimmel (the United States, b. 1954), Katalin Néray (Hungary, 1941–2007), Achile Bonito Oliva (Italy, b. 1939) and, to represent the local scene, Agnaldo Farias (b. 1955). See also the essays “Ruptura com o suporte” in which Nelson Aguilar advocates the dematerialization of art (ICAA digital archive doc. no. 1111099), and the text by Mari Carmen Ramirez that questions the event’s formulation (“Re-materialização = Re-materialization,” doc. no. 1111101). Both texts were published in the biennial’s catalogue.