The Fundação Bienal de São Paulo will be opening its 26th Biennial on September 25, 2004. With the theme of Território Livre [in English, "Image Smugglers in a Free Territory], the exhibition will be held in 25,000 square meters of exhibition space on the three floors of the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, home of the Fundação Bienal, portão 3, Parque do Ibirapuera, São Paulo, Brazil. This edition of the biennial – which is considered to be one of the three most important events of its kind in the world – features 140 artists from 60 different countries. The chief curator is Alfons Hug, who was in charge of the previous edition, in 2002. The theme proposed derives from the idea of the no-man's land, not only geographically, politically and socially speaking, but mainly as an aesthetic field, where art defies the boundaries of reality. The 26th Bienal de São Paulo is divided into 3 main segments: "National Representations", Special Project Rooms and "Invited Artists". The "National Representations" segment presents the works of artists from 55 countries (one artist per country). The Bienal has encouraged the participation of a large number of African and Asian countries, which usually get little exposure in contemporary art shows. This year's edition also provides a special exhibition on African Photography, with a selection of 8 artists. AFRICAN PHOTOGRAPHY curator: Simon Njami South Africa Zwelethu Mthetwa Togo Cornelius Augustt Azzaglo Nigeria Otobong Nkanga Great Britain/Ghana Eileen Perrier Democratic Republic of Congo Jean Depara Cameroon Samuel Fosso Senegal Abderramane Sakaly Senegal Mama Casset NATIONAL REPRESENTATIONS BELGIUM Cristine Felten & Véronique Massinger BULGARIA Albena Kazakova CHILE Patrick Hamilton CHINA Qu Yan COLOMBIA Jaime Avila FRANCE Melik Ohanian GERMANY Thomas Demand HUNGARY Peter Szarka ITALY Francesco Vezzoli MEXICO Miguel Calderón NORWAY Ingrid Book & Carina Hedén PARAGUAY Juan Britos PERU Carlos Runcie-Tanaka POLAND Piotr Uklanski SINGAPORE Ho Tzu Nyen SPAIN Fernando Sanchez Castillo SWEDEN Jonas Dahlberg SWITZERLAND Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger UKRAINE Victor Marushchenko URUGUAY Martin Sastre INVITED ARTISTS Curator: Alfons Hug Karim Aïnouz & Marcelo Gomes Brazil Edward Burtynsky Canada René Francisco Cuba Simryn Gill Australia Naoya Hatakeyama Japan Vera Lutter Germany Fabiano Marques Brazil Aernout Mik The Netherlands Moataz Nasr Egypt Neistat Brothers USA Catherine Opie USA Rassim Bulgaria Caio Reisewitz Brazil Lois Renner Austria Julian Rosefeldt Germany Song Dong China Alec Soth USA Su-Mei Tse Luxemburg Veronika Zapletalová Czech Republic Krzysztof Zielinski Poland SPECIAL ROOMS Curator: Alfons Hug Thomas Struth Germany