Heaven is Ours / Céu é Nosso
Zulu
Rafa
DJ Anderson do Paraíso
In the outskirts of Brazil’s megacities, baloeiros spend months crafting enormous, hand-painted hot air balloons. The making is collective and driven entirely by the community that will witness the launch. The balloons are devotional objects; they carry no passengers and serve no pragmatic purpose yet embody profound emotional significance. To be a baloeiro is a serious life commitment, made under permanent risk of raids, arrest and up to three years’ imprisonment. Still, the culture thrives, as intricate support networks have formed to sustain the marginalised practise. Each release becomes a claim that the skies are a place of public imagination.
Heaven is Ours / Céu é Nosso brings this practice to the Sala d’Armi, filling the space with these silk paper balloons. The installation features a polyphonic soundscape by DJ Anderson do Paraíso, a musician rooted in baile funk BH, a culture sharing the balloons’ favela origins and history of criminalisation and state suppression. His composition reflects the weight of this navigation. On the festival’s opening weekend, the baloeiros will inflate and launch a specially commissioned twelve-metre balloon over the Arsenale.