It all started with a conversation. During our first visit to Salvador as a collective, we were told a story at the Casa do Boulevard about festive gatherings held there in the 1960s. At those events, a collective soup was prepared — one that, according to those who lived it, didn’t just feed bodies but helped hold together a spirit of experimentation that contributed to what would become the cultural imaginary of Tropicália.
That moment became, for us, the base broth of this idea. Not as a historical record, but as a shared experience that sparked questions: What happens when a project is cooked slowly, in company, from what is remembered and imagined together? From there, Transmigração emerged —not as a traditional exhibition, but as a platform shaped by gestures of listening, movement, and collective making, connecting memory, territory, and presence across Salvador, anchored at the Casa do Boulevard.
In Puerto Rico, artist Jochi Melero, also known as the “Soup Wizard,” prepared a caldo santo, shared among many. The pot used for that ritual was later transformed into a pinhole camera, with which Melero traveled across the island capturing images. What was once a cooking vessel became a device for seeing — a container of light, memory, and transformation. This cauldron-camera is now part of the exhibition as sculpture and visual archive.
In Salvador, the public preparation of the Sopa de Rumores begins at the Feira de São Joaquim, where ingredients and utensils are gathered. The cooking is accompanied by a sonic invocation by MIMA, who performs wearing a garment designed by William Murphy, later displayed as a textile sculpture, tracing the transition between body, voice, and object.
The project expands through contributions by Michael Linares and Fabián Vélez, who present a phytoacoustic sound installation translating the electrical signals of plants into sound, and by Pablo Guardiola, whose photographic installation centers on Caribbean flora and the act of observing through archival image-making. The tools and materials used—spoons, cloths, pots, textiles—are preserved as activated artifacts, bearing the traces of use and shared experience.
Here, to curate is to call forth memory. Only the cauldron is “cured” in both the ritual and conceptual sense. The relationships among objects reveal a network where function, symbolism, and presence overlap.
Transmigração is not a static exhibition, but a living framework. Transmigration operates as a curatorial methodology: a principle of transformation and resonance that proposes new ways of inhabiting bodies, languages, memories, and territories—still cooking, still becoming.
Information
Address
Pivô Boulevard Boulevard Suiço, 11A Nazaré Salvador BA
Opening Hours
Monday–Saturday: 2:00 pm–7:00 pm Closed on Wednesdays and Sundays
Program
Activation at Pivô Boulevard
Saturday, Sep 06th 2025, 6:00 pm Pivô Boulevard, Boulevard Suiço, 11A, Nazaré Salvador BA
Exhibition Opening
Sunday, Sep 07th 2025, 6:00 pm Pivô Boulevard, Boulevard Suiço, 11A, Nazaré Salvador BA
Pivô
Pivô is a non-profit art space that provides a platform for exchange, critical thinking, and artistic experimentation. It was founded in 2012 inside one of São Paulo’s most iconic modernist buildings, the Copan, designed by Oscar Niemeyer and located in the city’s central area. Since its inception, the institution has enabled and facilitated projects by over two hundred local and international artists and curators, at all stages of their careers.
Its program includes temporary exhibitions, new commissions, residencies, publications, and discursive educational public programming, fostering a critical understanding of the most pressing local and global issues in art and society. Its core mission is to create expanding networks of exchange between artistic and cultural practitioners from different contexts, and to serve as an active meeting point for the emerging art scene in Brazil.
After more than a decade in operation, in 2023 Pivô opened a new space in Salvador (Bahia). Located in a historic house that holds significant cultural relevance in the city, Pivô Salvador aims to establish itself as a multidisciplinary platform for research and exchange in the Northeast of Brazil. The institution’s main objective is to promote local artistic production and provide a free and open space for dialogue among various agents in the field of contemporary culture, both nationally and internationally.
Beta–Local
Beta-Local es una organización sin fines de lucro fundada en 2009 en Puerto Rico. Su misión es crear y sostener espacios y tiempos dedicados al desarrollo de prácticas artísticas contemporáneas en Puerto Rico y el Caribe. Desde su origen, ha operado como una iniciativa dirigida por artistas, cultivando relaciones a largo plazo que priorizan el intercambio de conocimiento, la colaboración y la experimentación. A través de sus programas y proyectos, Beta-Local ha construido una red cultural activa que busca pensar y activar las prácticas artísticas desde contextos locales, fomentando nuevas formas de producción, circulación y reflexión crítica, tanto dentro como fuera de los circuitos tradicionales del arte. Su trabajo articula una visión colectiva del quehacer artístico como motor de transformación social y cultural, entrelazando pedagogías experimentales, procesos de investigación y el cruce entre disciplinas.
OtherNetwork
OtherNetwork is a decentralised cultural institution that connects independent art spaces. At its core are hundreds of projects that are rooted in their local context, responding to the needs of artists directly. We see the term ‘independent’ as fluid and context-specific, and continuously seek to unpack what this means to cultural practitioners in different global localities.
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Credits
An exhibition by ifa - Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, curated by Beta-Local and hosted by Pivô Salvador with artworks by Jochi Melero, Fabián Vélez, MIMA, William Murphy, Pablo Guardiola, Michael Linares.
Artists
Jochi Melero, Fabián Vélez, MIMA, Pablo Guardiola, Michael Linares, William Murphy
Pivô Team
Founder and Artistic Director
Fernanda Brenner
Institutional Direction
Carolina de Sá, Jaqueline Santiago
Program Manager
Ramon Martins
Executive Coordinator - International Projects
Estela Santana
Project Coordinator
Renata Furtado
Pivô Pesquisa Coordinator
Taina Azeredo
Production Coordinator
Cássia Viana
Financial Manager
Julie Schlossman
Communications Analyst
Ian Reis
Production Assistance
Lucas Abner, Murilo Silva
Executive Assistant
Mayra Victorino
General Services
Mateus Asipá
Space Maintenance
Francisca Márcia Ferreira de Sousa, Hungria Freitas da Silva
Pivô Partners
Learning Lab Coordinator
Vanessa Orewa
Graphic Design
Pedro Brucznitski
Incentive Laws Consultancy
Clarice Magalhães, Amanda Leones
Legal Consultancy
Caio Mariano Advogados, Montenegro Castelo Advogados associados, Pannunzio, Trezza Advogados
Accountants
Quality Contabilidade
SSA Space Renovation
Anagrama
Security
Visibilidade Segurança
Driver
Iron Andrade
Beta–Local
Curators
Michael Linares, Pablo Guardiola
Directors
Michael Linares, Pablo Guardiola
OtherNetwork
Board of Directors
Quentin Creuzet, Domitille Debret, Colin Keays, Federico Martelli
Creative Direction
Cookies (Federico Martelli, Alice Grégoire, Clément Périssé)
Research Team
Samantha Modisenyane, Abraham Tettey, Camila Alegría, Matheus dos Reis, Camilo Quiroga
Website Conception & Visual Identity
F451 (Quentin Creuzet, Domitille Debret)
Editor
Colin Keays
Project Management
ifa Visual Arts Department (Nina Frohm)
ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen
Project Management
Nina Frohm
Travelling Exhibition Department
Sabiha Keyif, Nina Frohm, Valerie Hammerbacher, Sabina Klemm, Clea Laade, Alexander Lisewski, Clemens Wildt
Translation and Proofreading
Adriana Francisco