Favelas at the biennale: Exhibiting Brazilian informality in Europe

Brazilian favelas have become world-famous through representations in cinema, tourism and art. This article discusses engagements with Brazilian favelas in art and architecture, focusing on the 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture. This exhibition is analysed as a practice of worlding, focusing on how artists and curators transform favelas into objects to be seen, experienced and thought about. The article shows that the incorporation of favelas into European art contexts is inextricably related, first, to imaginaries of Brazilian nationality and, second, to the idea that the global North can learn from favelas. Building on this, I argue that ethical and epistemological questions are inextricably intertwined when exhibiting Brazilian favelas in Europe, which implies recognizing the complicity of academic research in this process of knowledge production.