At the 36th São Paulo Bienal, the Réunion-born artist reimagines sound, sculpture, and memory as intertwined forces of liberation. Through Moka BOB Sound System and L’Abolitwar, Padeau transforms the residue of colonial industry into instruments of vibration, remembrance, and possibility.
Installation view of Alain Padeau at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice © Suzette Bell-Roberts
In Alain Padeau’s hands, the detritus of history hums with new life. Born in 1956 on Réunion Island, the artist has spent decades sculpting from the fragments of the past—reclaimed sugar factory parts, rusted iron, and resonant metals—turning them into poetic testaments to survival and transformation. At the 36th São Paulo Bienal, Padeau presents Moka BOB Sound System, a spherical, sonic sculpture that fuses geometry, memory, and sound. Activated through performance, it connects the musical lineage of the bobre—a single-string instrument central to Réunion’s maloya music—with broader diasporic rhythms that stretch from the Indian Ocean to Brazil. Alongside L’Abolitwar (La machine à fabriquer la liberté), a monumental assemblage made from the remnants of a colonial sugar mill, Padeau’s works resonate with the Bienal’s theme, “Not All Travellers Walk Roads,” exploring how sound, movement, and memory can transcend borders and time.
In this conversation with Brendon Bell-Roberts, Padeau reflects on how his practice transforms instruments of industry into instruments of freedom, and how vibration itself becomes a metaphor for collective liberation.
Brendon Bell-Roberts: Moka BOB Sound System brings together sculpture, sound, and performance. How did this hybrid form emerge, and what does it mean to you to build an instrument that is also a monument?
Alain Padeau: For me, the distinction between instrument and monument has always been fluid. Both are vessels for memory. On Réunion Island, the bobre is not just a musical instrument; it’s an archive of rhythm, resistance, and the spirit of maroonage. When I began building Moka BOB, I wanted to give that lineage a body—something that could vibrate, resonate, and remember. The structure is spherical, mathematical, yet deeply human. It speaks through sound, but also through silence and space. It’s a machine for freedom, for connection—a way to listen to the past while imagining other futures.
Your work often reclaims materials with heavy historical resonance, like the sugar factory parts in L’Abitibi. What drew you to these remnants of industrial colonialism?
The sugar factory is a monument to both labour and loss. On Réunion, these machines once turned human effort into profit, pain into production. When I recover their parts, I’m not seeking nostalgia—I’m seeking transformation. In L’Abolition War, which means “the abolition war,” I reassembled these mechanical fragments into a living sculpture. It is both wounded and alive. By reshaping the instruments of oppression into instruments of memory, I hope to open a dialogue between history and liberation, matter and meaning.
Installation view of Alain Padeau at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice © Suzette Bell-Roberts
Sound in your work often operates as a bridge between worlds—between the visible and the invisible, the living and the ancestral. How do you think about sound as a sculptural material?
Sound is the most direct form of vibration—it’s the breath of matter. On an island, surrounded by the sea’s endless rhythm, you learn to listen differently. The Moka BOB Sound System is built from that listening. It doesn’t only emit sound; it absorbs it. It holds resonance, like a drum holds the heartbeat of a people. When the strings vibrate, they awaken stories that have been silenced. In this sense, sound is not just heard—it is felt, remembered, and transmitted through the body.
Your work at the Bienal connects Réunion Island to the broader currents of the Global South. How does this context shape your understanding of belonging and exchange?
Réunion is both centre and periphery—it’s where worlds meet and collide. Africa, Asia, and Europe all left traces there, and yet it is none of these things alone. When I bring my work into dialogue with Brazil, I find a mirror: another place shaped by creolisation, by the legacies of plantation and resistance. The Bienal offers a space where these shared geographies of the South can speak to one another. It’s not about representation, but about resonance—finding the frequencies where our histories overlap and our dreams converge.
You’ve described Moka BOB as a “machine of freedom.” Can you expand on that idea? What kind of freedom does the work seek or generate?
Freedom is not a finished state—it’s a vibration, a movement that must be maintained. The Moka BOB vibrates because freedom is always unfinished. Its sound recalls the improvisation of maloya, the music born from the enslaved, which transformed pain into rhythm. I want that energy to live inside the sculpture—to suggest that freedom is not abstract, but bodily, communal, sonorous. The machine doesn’t fabricate liberty; it invites it. It asks each listener to tune themselves differently, to find freedom in resonance, not possession.
Installation view of Alain Padeau at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice © Suzette Bell-Roberts
The Bienal’s theme—”Not All Travellers Walk Roads”—invites us to rethink movement and relation. How do you see your work speaking to this idea of travelling through sound, memory, and material?
I have always travelled without moving. My work walks through sound, through fragments of rusted metal, through ancestral whispers that cross oceans. For me, travel is not only geographical—it’s temporal, emotional, spiritual. Moka BOB carries the vibration of the ship, the plantation, the dance, the rebellion, the silence. It travels between all these spaces. To walk without roads is to move through the unseen—to trust the resonance that connects all things. That’s where art lives, and where I try to listen.
Alain Padeau’s presentation, Moka BOB Sound System and L’Abolitwar, is on view at the 36th São Paulo Bienal until December 15, 2025. For more information, visit 36.bienal.org.br.
