Froiid is participating in the 16th Curitiba International Biennial of Contemporary Art with the installation The Pigeon That Escapes the Bat.
The work is part of this year's edition, THRESHOLDS, curated by Adriana Almada and Tereza de Arruda, a curatorial proposal that reflects on spaces of transition, zones of uncertainty, and the transformations shaping our present.
The Biennial takes place across multiple venues in Curitiba and throughout the state of Paraná from June 14 to November 15, 2026, bringing together artists from diverse backgrounds and research practices.
ABOUT THE WORK
The Pigeon That Escapes the Bat takes Mineirão Stadium as its physical, sonic, and symbolic structure. Drawing on the vibrations generated by organized football supporters' chants, the work shifts the stadium from the condition of a stable architectural form to that of a body in motion. Built from reinforced concrete modules, Mineirão carries within its very engineering the capacity to respond to collective presence: the greater the intensity of the crowd, the greater its oscillation. It is precisely this moment—when the mass transforms the space, turning architecture into an event—that interests the artist.
The installation operates through electric motors activated by software developed from more than fifty hours of recordings of supporters' chants. The sound sets the structure in motion, producing a continuous movement accompanied by bells distributed throughout the work. These sonic elements bring together distinct temporalities: the stadium, popular ritual, collective occupation, and Brazil's colonial past, in which the bell organized the rhythms of social, religious, and labor life.
The title of the work derives from the samba Morro do Sossego, by Arthur Poener and Candeia, which was censored during Brazil's military dictatorship due to its association with idleness and class struggle. Displaced from its original musical context, the phrase remains as both a trace and a site of tension. Between flight and permanence, it traverses the work as the image of a collective force that escapes forms of control.
Froiid's practice takes the game as both a social structure and a language. Across his works, rules, competition, and systems are reorganized as devices capable of revealing dynamics of power, belonging, and popular invention. In The Pigeon That Escapes the Bat, the stadium emerges as the place where these forces converge: a space of vibration, conflict, celebration, and the continuous reconfiguration of collective experience.
