How does the curatorial project for a biennial take shape? What can a title contain? Raphael Fonseca, chief curator of the 14th Bienal do Mercosul, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, shares with the public ideas and work processes that relate his current experience to his earlier projects.

Entitled Estalo (Snap), an allusion to the gesture of ‘rubbing the thumb against the middle finger to produce a split-second sound that expands into the space,’ this edition of the biennial centres on artists from the Global South, breaking down the borders that surround a biennial commonly regarded as one of Latin American art.

In this workshop, Raphael Fonseca discusses how artists respond not just to the provocation of a title, but also to the specific context of the city in which the biennial is taking place.