Jacques Leenhardt critiques decolonial framing of Wifredo Lam at São Paulo Bienal

French critic Jacques Leenhardt argues against simplistically categorizing Wifredo Lam within contemporary decolonial debates during a lecture at the 35th São Paulo Bienal. Lam's anticolonial stance, he contends, emerged from a complex synthesis of cultural heritages rather than direct political alignment. The Cuban artist, recognized by Picasso and the Surrealists upon his 1938 arrival in Paris, developed a deeply personal visual language. His work engages with transculturation—a concept borrowed from Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz—to envision a unified humanity beyond racial, economic, and national barriers. Lam's paintings, such as 'A Selva' (1943) and 'El tercer Mundo' (1956), address historical violence, including that of the sugar industry and slavery, through symbolic figures drawn from Cuban Santería and Haitian Vodou. The Bienal's special room displays eight of his works, two from the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), two from the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the remainder from private collections. Leenhardt emphasizes that Lam's primary aim was to reunify what history had brutally separated, using painting as a means to heal historical wounds.