Videobrasil Festival Celebrates 30 Years with Focus on Women Artists from Islamic World

The 18th edition of the Videobrasil Festival marks its 30th anniversary, continuing its historical focus on geopolitical issues through the work of women artists from the Islamic world. Afghan artist Jeanno Gaussi presents 'Kabul Fragments 4', featuring 20 photographs of an Afghan street artist, completing a series that began with her return to Kabul in 2007 after 20 years in exile. Iranian artist Bita Razavi shows 'Bosphorus: a Trilogy', a video work reconstituted after Islamic police in Iran seized most of her original material in 2012. Both artists live in exile—Gaussi in Berlin and Razavi in Helsinki, Finland. The festival's curatorial program, Panoramas do Sul, established in the mid-1990s, serves as a platform for artists from the Global South engaged with multicultural and geopolitical tensions, using video as a primary poetic tool. Festival founder and curator Solange Farkas emphasizes the focus on emerging Southern thought, amplified by artists from regions with limited access to mainstream circuits. The festival's video library at SESC Pompeia features historical works like Mahmoud Hojeij's 'Shameless Transmissions of Desired Transformations per Day' (2000) and Bouchra Khalili's 'Vue Panoramic' (2006). For this edition, a curatorial committee selected 94 artists from over 2,000 submissions across six continents, with a significant majority being women.