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»The initiative

The initiative
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Mission & Strategy

BREEZE is an annual programme dedicated to promoting Brazilian contemporary art on the international stage. Its mission is to nurture cultural expression by embracing the very spirit of contemporary art: diverse, dynamic and borderless. Today’s practices span across disciplines – from the humanities and sciences to technological research and social innovation – while encompassing every art form, from dance and music to gastronomy and architecture. With this openness at its heart, BREEZE is an umbrella initiative that takes many shapes: 

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exhibitions, creative exchanges, public
programmes
and publications.
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​The three core values guiding BREEZE’s mission are:
 

  • Collaboration – The exchange of ideas across cultures and disciplines is central to societal progress. BREEZE provides a platform for practitioners and organisations to connect.
     

  • Representation – Democratizing access and broadening diversity in artistic practice is vital to unlock art’s transformative potential. BREEZE amplifies and listens to underrepresented voices.
     

  • Innovation & Openness – Contemporary art challenges paradigms and hegemonies. BREEZE embodies that spirit, adapting its format and strategy to keep pace with current debates.
     

BREEZE is an initiative by the Embassy of Brazil in London and Instituto Guimarães Rosa, in partnership with organisations in Brazil and the UK.

Advisory Panel
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Michael Asbury

The Anglo-Brazilian art historian, curator and art critic is a founding member of the research centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) and Professor of Modern and Contemporary Brazilian Art at UAL. Asbury has curated exhibitions in the UK, Europe and Latin America, having worked with organisations such as Tate Modern, Fundação Iberê Camargo, Camden Arts Centre. His extensive writing output includes editions by institutions such as MAXXI Rome; ICA Miami; Whitechapel Gallery; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba; Ella Fontanals-Cisneiros Collection, Miami; Astrup Fearnley Musset, Oslo; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; Documenta 12, Kassel; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; and Tate. His most recent monograph entitled Today is Always Yesterday: Contemporary Brazilian Art was published in December 2023 by Reaktion Books.

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Caroline Carrion

Bienal de São Paulo’s chief communications officer, Caroline Carrion holds bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and journalism from Universidade de São Paulo, alongside a degree in Intercultural Management and Communication at Université Paris IV, Sorbonne. Author of texts for exhibitions and artists' books, in Brazil and abroad, Ms Carrion has worked in the arts since 2008, alternating curatorial and managerial roles. In 2015 she curated Eccoci!, an urban intervention project by artist Berna Reale held in public areas of scarce touristic access in Venice, during the opening and closing weeks of the 56th Biennale, and was one of the emergent guest curators of the Prêmio CNI SESI SENAI Marcantonio Vilaça para as Artes Plásticas.

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Tamar Clarke Brown

Tamar Clarke-Brown is an artist, writer and Curator (Arts Technologies, Serpentine). Her work centres alternative mythologies and diasporic practices, with a special focus on platforming underrepresented and overlooked imaginaries. At Serpentine, her work involves commissioning new artworks, events, research and R&D projects engaged with experimental worldbuilding and exploring the untapped civic and social potential of technologies. Most recently she commissioned and curated the collaborative video game project, web3 tokens and exhibition Third World: The Bottom Dimension, led by Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan.

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Adrian Locke

After completing a PhD in the Department of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex in 2001 Adrian Locke joined the Exhibitions Department at the Royal Academy of Arts. Since then he has worked on a diverse portfolio of over twenty ground-breaking and award winning exhibitions that range from major surveys of contemporary artists, including  Anish Kapoor, Ai Weiwei, and William Kentridge to cultural explorations such as Aztecs, Turks: A journey of a Thousand Years, 600-1600, Byzantium 330-1453, and Oceania, and smaller, focussed exhibitions such as Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910-1940, Leon Spilliaert, and Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist. He has lectured and published widely. Adrian has also worked collaboratively on exhibitions for other institutions including Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Brazilian Embassy in London and the V&A.

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Marco Antônio Nakata

The director of the Instituto Guimarães Rosa holds a Bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of São Paulo and is a career diplomat since 1994. In 2013, he graduated from the Advanced Studies Course at the Rio Branco Institute with the thesis "Digital Media as an Instrument of Public Diplomacy." Abroad, he has served in the Brazilian consulates-general in London and New York and in the embassies in Tokyo, Moscow, Rome, and Bratislava. In Brazil, he has worked in the federal administration's Ceremonial and Press Office and served as the ombudsman of the Foreign Service before becoming the first director of the Guimarães Rosa Institute upon its creation in March 2023.

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Catherine Petitgas

French by birth, London-based patron, collector and art historian Catherine Petitgas has been a committed supporter of museums and cultural non-profits in London, Paris and across the globe. She chairs the board at Gasworks, which provides space for emerging artists, is a Trustee of the Liverpool Biennial as well as a member of the International Advisory Board of the São Paulo Biennial. Petitgas also sits on the board of Les Amis du Centre Pompidou, chaired Tate’s International Council and is a member of its Latin American acquisitions committee. Petitgas was also an author and Executive Editor of Thames and Hudson books dedicated to Latin American art.

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Carsten Recksik

Carsten Recksik studied Art and Public Space at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg (2003) and Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich (2006). In 2007, he received a scholarship to study at the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado art school, São Paulo. He has been involved in a range of art projects as curator and project manager, including work with Hauser & Wirth in London, Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the German Embassy in London, ICA London and others. Recksik is a board member of the Society for German-Chinese Cultural Exchange, Berlin, and of the non-profit institution E-Werk Luckenwalde. Recksik was Associate Publisher of Frieze magazine before being appointed Publisher of ArtReview, one of the world’s leading international contemporary art magazines, in 2019.

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Frances Reynolds

Frances Reynolds is the Founder and President of the Fundación Arte Viva in Europe and Inclusartiz Institute in Brazil, non-profit organisations that promote cultural initiatives to bring art, culture and education closer to all sections of society, through initiatives varying from hosting international artist and curator residencies to supporting and promoting educational projects and art exhibitions in leading cultural organisations, with the objective of creating a platform for cultural dialogue and social transformation. An experienced patron and an active supporter of the arts, Ms Reynolds holds a collection spanning over 80 years of international output, and sits on the board of institutions such as Tate, Centre Georges Pompidou, Delfina Foundation, Royal Academy of Arts, MoMa, ARCO Madrid, MASP, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, among others.

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Paulo Vieira

A lawyer by training with a bachelor’s degree from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro and master’s from the University of Cambridge, Paulo Vieira has a consolidated career in corporate law as a founding director of the firm Vieira Rezende. As an international arts administrator, collector and patron, Mr Vieira is the first non-European to chair Tate’s International Board, a position held since 2022 in tandem with his role as the executive director of Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro. Among his first institutional activities since embracing an intensive involvement in the culture industry since the early ‘00s, Vieira also held the position of president of the Associação de Amigos da Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage between 2003 and 2007.

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Jenny White FRSA

After working for the British Council in Japan, Thailand, and Cuba, Jenny White left her position as Head of Visual Arts Programme to become the CEO of the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Established in 1985 as a non-governmental, non-profit making body, the Sasakawa Foundation fosters collaboration, exchange and research among cultures and societies in the UK and Japan. Ms White is an experienced arts administrator with a particular interest in multilateral cooperation, visual arts and ecology, and believes that we can learn from an international approach to responding to climate change. She is co-chair of London based A.P.T Art Gallery and Studios, a visiting fellow for International Art Projects at the University of Derby and a trustee of the Japan Society.

Past Editions

Past Editions

2024

The 2024 edition of BREEZE marked a deliberate evolution from its 2023 format. In its inaugural year, BREEZE began with Osvaldo Carvalho’s solo show ‘False Symmetry’, selected through a more open, less institutionalised process. In 2024, the programme introduced refinements to strengthen its structure, reach, and impact. The open call was extended until 29 February and, importantly, production grants were doubled from £4,000 to £8,000. Entry rules were adjusted: applications were limited to galleries affiliated with ABACT (or via a partner gallery in ABACT), consolidating a tighter institutional framework. The jury was reconfigured, bringing in new voices such as Adrian Locke, Catherine Petitgas and Tamar Clarke-Brown, along with a representative of Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, enhancing the curatorial diversity of judgment. In April 2024, the winning proposal was announced. Galeria Lume was selected to mount a solo exhibition by Hal Wildson, titled ‘RE-UTOPYA’, at Sala Brasil in London in October. The project drew on themes of reforestation, identity, memory, erasure and the rewriting of Brazil’s imaginaries. From 8 to 31 October, ‘RE-UTOPYA’ was on view in London, bringing into vivid form Wildson’s interrogation of how national narratives are constructed and contested. The conclusion of the BREEZE 2024 cycle thus centred on Wildson’s work, which both affirmed and expanded BREEZE’s commitment to art that is socially engaged, resistant and poetic. Since then, Wildson’s profile has continued to grow. In 2025 he held his first solo show in São Paulo, under the same ‘Re-Utopya’ concept, through Galeria Lume. (https://www.premiopipa.com/2025/03/re-utopya-primeira-individual-de-hal-wildson-em-sao-paulo/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) He was also nominated for the PIPA Prize in 2024, and his works are included in institutional collections and exhibitions in Brazil. (https://institutopipa.com/en/2024/07/02/hal-wildson-en/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) Through BREEZE, his work gained fresh international visibility, and ‘RE-UTOPYA’ now figures as a pivotal moment in his trajectory—bridging his evolving artistic concerns with new audiences and institutional recognition.

2023

The inaugural edition of BREEZE in 2023 marked the launch of the Embassy of Brazil’s new programme to promote Brazilian contemporary art abroad. The selection process began with an open call that ran from October 2022 to January 2023, drawing nearly two dozen proposals from galleries and artist-led initiatives. The jury ultimately chose a solo exhibition by Osvaldo de Carvalho, represented by Janaina Torres Galeria, to inaugurate the programme. Titled False Symmetry, Carvalho’s series of eight large-scale paintings was shown at Sala Brasil in London from 5 to 29 October 2023. The works are characterised by bold, saturated colour palettes and compositional strategies that deliberately deviate from classical symmetry. Carvalho’s visual language intertwines references to mass culture, urban space, interior objects, and more canonical art-historical motifs to probe complex power relations and environmental impacts. In his own framing, Carvalho has argued that false symmetry speaks to a misconception: that agents with different social, racial or economic positions operate from equal starting points. The curatorial commentary emphasised how his work addresses Brazil’s history of asymmetry, from colonial expropriation to contemporary social and ecological crises. Carvalho is a Rio-born painter based in São Paulo, with a practice extending to drawing, video, installation and photography. He holds a master’s in Visual Poetics and his work has featured in exhibitions across Europe and Latin America, and is present in several institutional collections (e.g. Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul, National Library of Rio de Janeiro). For BREEZE 2023, False Symmetry thus set a bold and critical tone. The exhibition not only established the programme’s ambition to confront themes of memory, inequity and the environment—but also positioned Brazilian contemporary art as a voice in global dialogues of power, justice, and resistance.

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