How does community emerge? And what connects people across time, place, and diverse experiences?
Songs, dances, rituals, and language carry these connections: they preserve memories, convey experiences, and create moments of coming together.
At the center of the exhibition is Yael Bartana’s video and sound installation Mir Zaynen Do! (We Are Here!) (2024). The Yiddish title refers to a song of Jewish resistance during the Second World War. In Bartana’s work, two ensembles from different diasporas come together in São Paulo – communities shaped by experiences of displacement that continue to carry their cultural traditions far from their place of origin: Coral Tradição, a Jewish-Brazilian choir, and Ilú Obá De Min, an Afro-Brazilian street music ensemble. Its members are descendants of Maroons – people who escaped enslavement. Their voices, rhythms, and movements intertwine to form a living community: quiet and meditative, loud and powerful.
The performance is conducted by 97-year-old choir director Hugueta Sendacz In the ruins of the Teatro de Arte Israelita Brasileiro, Bartana focuses on the shared present: on listening, togetherness, and collective presence. We Are Here! captures this moment of communal presence – community emerges through doing together.
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