LISBON.- From 3 September to 17 October, BoCA reaffirms itself as an “extra-disciplinary” project that inspires changes and reflections, with a programme that combines different rhythms, projects and relationships with artists and institutions, leaning into a transition of processes of production and creation, integrated, plural and sustainable.

Prove You Are Human, the central theme of the new edition of the Portuguese biennial, is about the activation of a radical empathy with history, presently rewriting and reinscribing collective narratives which will propose the opening of history to a biodiverse coexistence of multiple voices and respond to the urgencies of a contemporary world in crisis, mostly caused above all by climate changes.

Given the dehumanisation we currently observe, we face the biggest challenge of our lives, which the pandemic has only made more evident: to make life ethics a responsibility, and of this ‘in-between’ and ‘trans’ place we wish to build, a place of love. It is in that direction that the programme of this edition of BoCA is aimed, making space for the many meanings of discourse, revisiting wounds from the past that have not yet been confronted, envisaging a future that can be built in collaboration.

In 2021, BoCA commissions the first stage piece by film director Gus Van Sant: the musical theatre show “Andy”, inspired by the story of Andy Warhol. Documentary narratives are combined with fictional writing, revitalising a belief in the collective and in the creation of new movements with the strength of reconnection to the human. Besides the novelty of this performance within the artistic and cinematographic oeuvre of the North-American director, the work featuring Andy Warhol is also unique in bringing to Lisbon, as the place for its creation, the memory of a significant moment in global pop culture that Gus Van Sant got to experience from within.




BoCA will also reveal the large-scale installation by Grada Kilomba, “O Barco/The Boat”. The Portuguese artist based in Berlin creates her first piece for the public space, also inaugurating a new collective narrative in the same public space, one that is built upon a history of dehumanisation, violence, and the genocide of African and indigenous peoples.

For the first time in Portugal, BoCA will present Anne Imhof, one of the leading figures in a new generation of visual and performing arts. In “Untitled (Wave)”, the German artist explores the feminine and its historical condition. Another debut, the artist-activists LASTESIS (Chile) will develop, together with 80 local women and dissidents, the performance “Resistance or the vindication of a collective right”, which denounces the violence of colonial thought and extractivism.

This year’s edition also makes a great bet on Portuguese artists: rapper Capicua presents her first theatrical text; musician, visual artist, sound creative and theatre-maker Jonathan Uliel Saldanha gives life to visual and sound futurologies in the vegetable space; the performative and installation work by Andreia Santana invokes an interdependence between sculptures, performers and bacteria, which are placed into the sculptural objects through the physical, oral and sonic contact of the performers; and Odete, whose performance dives into a dialogue between history, archaeology and research, in order to recover a place for mystery and fantasy in contemporary times.

BoCA also seeks to combine the artistic programme with natural spaces and, in order to do so, develops the 10-year project “Defense of Nature”, inspired by the legacy of Joseph Beuys. The gesture that composes “Plantation of 7,000 Trees” is divided between the planting of 7,000 new creations (natural/artistic) of an autochthonous species, sowing the seeds of a long-term project in which new regions and thousands of national and international artists (a part of which are common citizens, here revisited as artists) will be agents in the construction of a forest of artists and artworks. In this merging of roles between natural and human, artist and non-artist, Beuys said the famous words “we can all be artists”. In light of this statement, BoCA’s artistic direction says: “we can all save the world”. Acting, in this sense, is the necessary step to take towards the identity test that will prove our humanity.
It is precisely in this pulsating place between art and nature that is set “Quero ver as minhas montanhas” (“I want to see my mountains”), curated by Delfim Sardo and Sílvia Gomes, with contributions by the artists Sara Bichão, Diana Policarpo, Dayana Lucas, Gustavo Sumpta, Gustavo Ciríaco, Musa paradisiaca and the collective Berru.

In the words of BoCA’s artistic director, John Romão, “if CAPTCHA (the automated Turing test that makes the distinction between computers and human beings) is a security authentication test through challenge and answer, the third edition of BoCA sets the challenge Prove You Are Human and listens to answers and questions from artists that are part of the programme, but also encourages the audience to take the test through the proposed premises, from the starting point of an aesthetic experience, reflection and an invitation to act”.

BoCA 2021 has the High Sponsorship of the Presidency of the Republic and is financed by the Directorate-General for the Arts/Ministry of Culture, Lisbon City Council, Almada City Council, Faro City Council, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Millennium bcp Foundation. Its co-producers are Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, the Centro Cultural de Belém Foundation, the EDP Foundation/MAAT - Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, joined by more than 30 partners and supports.