The first Bienal das Amazônias built 'Bubuia' around Amazonian waters (interview)

The first edition of the biennial gathers 120 artists from every country spanning the world's largest rainforest, curated by Keyna Eleison and Vânia Leal with Sandra Benites and Flávia Mutran on conceptualization.

An exhibition design for 'Bubuia: Waters as a Source of Imaginations and Desires' that turns Amazonian waters and the lives they hold into architectural space.

Architect Juliana Godoy's exhibition design took shape inside a building remodeled specifically for the biennial in Belém, maintaining a constant dialogue with the materials and cultures of the Amazon region.

The first Bienal das Amazônias opened with 120 artists under the title 'Bubuia: Waters as a Source of Imaginations and Desires', on view in Belém.

ArchDaily's Victor Delaqua interviewed architect Juliana Godoy, responsible for the exhibition design of the first Bienal das Amazônias, about translating Amazonian subjectivities into the spatial realm. The starting point, per the interview: the relationships between the waters and the diverse lives that inhabit the Amazon.

The biennial, titled 'Bubuia: Waters as a Source of Imaginations and Desires', brings together 120 artists from all the countries spanning the territory of the world's largest rainforest. It is curated by Keyna Eleison and Vânia Leal, with the collaboration of Sandra Benites and Flávia Mutran in the project's conceptualization, and is on view in Belém.

The exhibition took shape in a building remodeled specifically to host it, and its exhibition design maintains a constant dialogue with the materials and cultures of the region — the framework Godoy discussed in the interview.

A first-edition biennial chose to root its identity in water and the lives around it rather than a generic survey of the forest.

The design decision to remodel a local building and work with regional materials makes the architecture part of the curatorial statement.

Gathering artists from every country of the Amazon basin makes the biennial a geopolitical claim, not just an exhibition.

For a biennial of place, the architecture is an argument: a remodeled local building speaking in regional materials makes the exhibition's subject — the forest's ways of life — legible in space.

As of the October 2023 interview, the exhibition was on view in Belém with Godoy's spatial design framing the 120-artist program.