Africa Creative Encourages You to Let Your Mind Wander for 36th Bienal de São Paulo

The 36th Bienal de São Paulo – ‘Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice’, the largest art exhibition in Latin America held every two years at Ibirapuera Park, has just launched its new campaign: ‘If Your Head Is Not At The Bienal, Where’s It At?’, created by Africa Creative with voice over by legendary Brazilian singer and songwriter, Tom Zé.

The campaign turns the creative concept into a visual metaphor for the human mind. According to a Harvard study, people spend 46.9% of their time immersed in thoughts unrelated to what they’re doing. In this context, giant heads appear in various shapes and forms floating through São Paulo, symbolising these wandering thoughts that take us away from the present moment.

“For the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, it is a great pleasure to count on the creativity of Africa Creative in the campaign for the 36th Bienal de São Paulo. The agency managed to translate, in a playful and imaginative way, the Bienal’s spirit as a historic space for encounter, reflection, and collective experience — reinforcing our invitation for everyone to live this edition intensely and mindfully,” said Andrea Pinheiro, president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo.

The film brings the concept to life by showing giant heads flying across the sky, passing through different cityscapes — stuck in traffic, tangled in trees, bumping into elevators, or floating through restaurants and subway stations — representing thoughts that get lost in everyday life.

At the film’s conclusion, all the heads head toward the Bienal Pavilion and, upon entering the exhibition, transform into real people, reinforcing the invitation for visitors to attend — and reminding them that anyone who misses this edition will spend the next two years thinking about what they’ve lost.

“Heads are symbols of imagination, ideas, and dreams. And often, they’re everywhere except where they should be. With this campaign, we wanted to turn that behaviour into visual poetry — provoking people to notice where their attention has been wandering and showing that the Bienal is the perfect place for it to land,” said Sergio Gordilho, partner, co-president, and CCO of Africa Creative.