Fronteira Livre:
São Paulo Biennale, Brazil 2017

A close collaboration with migrants of CAMI migrants support center to design six banners in the Sao Paulo Metro. Each banner contained a pattern and message that the group wanted to communicate to the city.

Where in your life do you face borders? What is your personal story of these borders and where does your own individual experience relate to the collective experience of borders? How can we together build a movement to address and move the borders of today? These were the questions discussed with eight migrants in Sao Paulo from Bolivia, Peru, Angola, Haiti and Congo. Even after crossing the national border, they face a series of invisible borders, whether cultural, social or economic. Fronteira Livre (invisible borders) was a collaborative intervention for the 11th Architecture Biennale of São Paulo consisting of six banners for the São Paulo Metro and CPTM over the period of 16th October to 15th November 2017. The banners appeared in six main stations of the red line on the São Paulo metro: Barra-Funda, República, Sé, Brás, Tatuapé and Itaquera. This is the busiest line of the metro system carrying 4.7 million passengers a day. The intervention was carried out through a collaboration with eight members of the CAMI Migrant Support Center. Each of them shared a personal experience of borders that they have faced since their arrival in Brazil. Through storytelling, the group identified a collective experience of borders in their daily lives. The messages they wanted to communicate to the people of Sao Paulo was developed through words and patterns on six banners with the crosscutting theme: borders.

Team: Alexander Eriksson Furunes,
Maria Cau Levy, Gabriela Forjaz & Lucy Bullivant
Partner: CAMI Center for Migrant Suppor