Munich-based artist Giulia Zabarella (b. Padua, 1993) was selected by Salta art’s jury in collaboration with Pivô to participate in the Pivô Salvador Residency in Salvador da Bahia from May 1st to June 30th, 2026.
Working across performance, site-specific sound, video, and installation, Zabarella’s practice examines language, collective voice, and the spatial dynamics of participation. Through choral structures, multilingual texts, and site-responsive sound works, she investigates how cultural memory, political speech, and everyday ritual are embodied and transmitted. The choir functions in her work as both an aesthetic device and a social model, articulating tensions between individual agency and collective formation.
She studied Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich and Painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. Her work has been presented at institutions including MaximiliansForum and Kunstpavillon Munich, and she has participated in international residencies such as Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.
In Salvador Zabarella focuses on three interconnected fields of research: religious syncretism, Bahian Carnival, and Angolan capoeira traditions. Through fieldwork, collaboration, and embodied participation, she aims to explore how these practices intersect with Salvador’s colonial histories and continue to shape contemporary identities, languages, and forms of collective expression.
During her residency at Pivô Salvador, artist Giulia Zabarella undertakes a research trip to Chapada Diamantina and the town of Lençois in Bahia, Brazil.
This mountainous region is an interesting site for deepening her investigation into Afro-diasporic histories, folklore, and syncretic religious practices. The area’s very identity was shaped by a 19th-century diamond rush built upon a colonial history of forced indigenous and enslaved African labor.
While this boom rapidly urbanized towns like Lençóis and connected them to global markets, the industry ultimately collapsed following the 1888 abolition of slavery and resource exhaustion.
Today, the region’s complex history lives on through its June São João folk festivals. Originally introduced by Portuguese Jesuits, these celebrations have evolved into a rich cultural landscape spanning food, street bonfires, quadrilha dances, and accordion-led forró music.
This residency is realized in collaboration with Pivô Salvador.
About the Pivô Salvador Residency
The Pivô Salvador Residency is part of Salta art’s ongoing exchange between Munich and Brazil. The two-month program invites one Munich-based artist to live and work at Pivô Salvador, fostering research, dialogue, and engagement with the local context.
The residency takes place at Casa do Boulevard, a historic 1930s house in Salvador that once belonged to the Bahian painter Presciliano Silva and pianist Alice Moniz. The building has long functioned as a site of cultural production and exchange. The selected artist shares the house with one additional resident.
While Salta art invites a Munich-based artist to Salvador through this program, a curator from the North or Northeast of Brazil will undertake a residency in Munich in 2026 in collaboration with the City of Munich Department of Arts and Culture and Pivô, further strengthening transcontinental exchange.