Vilanismo brings the pulse of São Paulo’s peripheries to Berlin, transforming SAVVY Contemporary into a living space of resistance, relation and collective imagination.
20 August 2026
What happens when the margins refuse to remain marginal?
‘ARCHITECTURAL ECHOTONES. A POETICS OF THE SURROUNDS’ brings Brazilian collective Vilanismo to Berlin for its first presentation in the city, unfolding at SAVVY Contemporary as part of the 36th São Paulo Biennale’s travelling exhibition programme.
Founded in São Paulo in 2021, Vilanismo is a brotherhood of ten Black artists whose practice confronts stereotypes imposed on Black bodies while drawing on peripheral culture, Black masculinities, ancestral knowledge and Afro-Indigenous experience. Resistance here is not simply a subject. It becomes a method for making, gathering and imagining otherwise.
At SAVVY, the exhibition moves beyond the conventional gallery format. Installation, painting, drawing, video, and performance converge as the space becomes studio, laboratory, and echo chamber, carrying social, political, and artistic resonances between São Paulo and Berlin.
Taking its cue from urbanist AbdouMaliq Simone’s conception of the “Surrounds”, the project reclaims peripheral neighbourhoods as sites of invention and political possibility. Wedding and São Paulo’s outskirts meet not through equivalence, but through resonance, asking who shapes the city, who is pushed beyond its centre, and what becomes possible when the periphery speaks for itself.
Opening 10 September 2026 at SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin. On view until 22 November 2026.
Read the ART AFRICA interview with Vilanismo here: https://www.calameo.com/artafrica/read/0048361913bdd114589c6?authid=ohz1jYiCXvdv
