A maze in grace

On February 8, at 11 a.m., a new performance entitled A Maze in Grace was staged by composer, sound artist and librettist Neo Muyanga (1974, Johannesburg, South Africa). On the occasion, a 40-voice choir occupied the three floors of the Bienal Pavilion, around the structure’s iconic building-tall empty space, singing a new composition for the well-known melody Amazing Grace, often sung as a hymn at public mourning rituals in different parts of Africa, while also bearing religious-political connotation for the Afro-American community in the USA.

Muyanga’s work proposes a deconstruction under a new perspective of this song, which was composed in 1772 by John Newton, a white British slave trader who converted to become an abolitionist Anglican pastor at the end of the 18th century after a series of near-death experiences. The São Paulo theatrical collective Legítima Defesa, which stages poetic-political actions of reflection on and representation of blackness, collaborated with the performance, as also the artist Bianca Turner (b. 1984, São Paulo, Brazil), who produced the video-mapping used in the work.

A Maze in Grace, 2020 Performance, 60’ aprox. approx. Com a colaboração de featuring: Legítima Defesa (Eugênio Lima, Walter Balthazar, Luz Ribeiro, Jhonas Araújo, Palomaris Mathias, Tatiana Rodrigues Ribeiro, Fernando Lufer, Luiz Felipe Lucas, Luan Charles, Marcial Macome, Gilberto Costa, Ana Júlia Trávia e Aliadxs); produção production: Iramaia Gongora, figurino costume: Claudia Schapira; videoinstalação video-installation: Bianca Turner; cenografia set design: Wanderley Wagner