BLACK
Cite; Sight– Site
A Festival of Black Arts and Afro-Futures
June 2025 – October 2025
Reclaiming Space, Memory, and Futures
Black: Cite; Sight– Site: Afro-Diasporic Worlding is a layered, transnational festival launching Fall 2025 in São Paulo, Brazil before journeying to London, Chicago, and New York by Spring 2026, linking these cities as vital nodes in global Afro-diasporic cultural production. Anchored by the 36th São Paulo Biennale, Not All Travelers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice, the project convenes artists, theorists, and community leaders to explore Black life as a generative infrastructure of autonomy, memory, relation, and sustainability.
Immersive Art
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Collective Memory-Making
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Cultural Transformation
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Immersive Art 〰️ Collective Memory-Making 〰️ Cultural Transformation 〰️
Afro-Diasporic São Paulo and Beyond
Your Guide to Black Art, Culture, Histories, & Territories
A Map of Black Spaces
Discover the city’s Afro-diasporic spaces, from Galeria do Reggae to samba rodas and the sacred terreiros of Candomblé, Umbanda, and Macumba. Each location comes alive with stories of cultural significance and contemporary creativity.
Curated Event Listings
Mark your calendar for September-October 2025, when São Paulo will hum with Black art exhibitions, live music, film screenings, literary events, and food festivals—all celebrating resistance, memory, and world-building.
Diasporic Itineraries
Join us in late August and early September in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro for curated Afro-Brazilian cultural excursions leading up to the event launch and programming in São Paulo. In Salvador, explore Black art through studio visits, gallery walks, and a historical tour of Pelourinho. In Rio, take part in a vibrant pop-up gallery and cocktail reception, guided tours of carnival ateliers in Cidade do Samba, and visits to galleries and artists studios in the Morro da Providência favela.
Original
Programming
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These events map São Paulo as an Afro-diasporic palimpsest, uncovering layers of history and migration to reimagine the city as an archive of Black autonomy and creativity.
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Focused on Black placemaking, these events explore how Afro-diasporic communities transform urban spaces into sites of belonging and resistance, blending memory, movement, and creativity.
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Anchored by an exhibit in dialogue with the Biennale, these events immerse visitors in São Paulo’s dynamic Afro-diasporic spaces, fostering transformative engagements with the city and its people.
A Vision Rooted in Collective Power
At the heart of Black: Cite; Sight– Site is a commitment to honoring the continuity and creativity of Afro-diasporic life. Grounded in the principles of Ubuntu’s relationality, quilombismo’s legacy of autonomy, and AbdulMaliq Simone’s notion of “people as infrastructure,” the project activates São Paulo as a vibrant site of worlding from below.
Through deep collaboration with Afro-diasporic communities, we engage local practices of reclamation and transformation as integral to a global dialogue on art, memory, and collective becoming. By weaving together local histories with transnational currents of Black cultural production, Black: Cite; Sight– Site cultivates a shared vision of place—where ancestral memory and creative innovation shape new possibilities for the world we make together.