Oiticica was someone who was always pushing against trends, pushing against
being contained, whether it was by the market or by a museum or by a nation
Everything that Hélio was doing was like the most radical response to the lack of
liberty and the lack of respect to liberty
'Tropicália' was a creative
explosion and it was a political movement wrapped into one
The idea was for an art that could be participatory, that could be immersive and that would
give the public the freedom to move and to interact in a new world and in a new way
Over time, that led to some of the most
radical breakouts of what art could be
'Dear Guy, I have received your letter and
I'm very enthusiastic about the news concerning the possibility of an exhibit
I will be showing an environmental manifestation that I have already planned
and I named it "Tropicália"'
[Singing 'Tropicália']
The very word 'Tropicália' came to me because of a song that I had written in
1967 and a friend of mine who was a filmmaker, he heard the song and he said
'This felt so much like something I saw in Rio'
It's an artwork by this artist, Hélio Oiticica, and it's so much like it that you
should name this song 'Tropicália'
'Tropicália' is one of Oiticica's his best-known works
It's about the image of Brazil and trying to confront a stereotype of
Brazil as a tropical paradise
It was unbelievable because it was
this little tropical labyrinth and I thought it was really very much like
what we were trying to do in in popular music and it was like a visual
expression of our feelings, at least my feelings
[Singing 'Tropicália']
In the 1950s, Oiticica started as a geometric painter, he was making very
rigorous, very small paintings usually on cardboard
In the early 1960s, Oiticica
developed a new kind of sculpture, what he called 'Bólides', or fireballs, and
these were boxes that were constructed with little drawers and interactive
elements that the artist would put earth, or different kinds of found materials inside
Some of the earth that Oiticica placed in the 'Bólides' were taken from
places like Mangueira, one of the largest favelas in Rio de Janeiro
He made friends with members of the Samba dance school in Mangueira
Oiticica himself was a great dancer
He drew lots of inspiration from
the architecture, from the colours of those places but mostly from the
movement, the dance and the personality
'We are Blacks, Indians, Whites, everything at
the same time. Our culture has nothing to do with the European, despite being, to this day,
subjugated to it'
In 1968, things in Brazil got really intense because the
government issued a law that suspended 'habeas corpus', people could be stopped on
the street and arrested without any warrant, without any need,
just on suspicion and that led to the arrests, mass arrests and
torture of intellectuals, students, young people and that risk applied also to
musicians who were probably at the forefront of a kind of protest and a kind
of counterculture movement
Musicians like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil
A lot of creative people in Brazil suddenly had to leave Brazil
Hélio wasn't in prison, so it was slightly different for him, but he was a refugee in a way
and he couldn't, I don't believe he could have stayed in Rio at that point
When he arrived in London, he was looking for somewhere that was a rented room and so
he came to live with my parents in Putney
He was absolutely amazed at how much freedom there was here because he had
come from a dictatorship where, if you stepped out of line, you would be taken out
'As you can see, I'm anxious to leave Rio. It is too much for my brains
All free wills seemed to be repressed or castrated by one of the most
brainwashed societies of all time'
So the 'Parangolé' was another type of sculpture that Oiticica was
developing in the mid-1960s. He created a series of capes that could be worn in
almost any way. They were basically pieces of cloth stapled in odd places
and the wearer got to choose how they wore it. Some of them contain messages,
often poetic messages but also they could be read as forms of protest or solidarity
These things are a radical experience. You just wear a 'Parangolé'
Those clothes that were not clothes. Still, they say so much
He introduced into his art
the Afro-Brazilian culture, and then it would involve favelas, the Samba and
all other aspects that were very identifiable as Brazilian and that led
to 'Tropicália'
In 1969, Oiticica had a major exhibition called 'The Whitechapel
Experiment' and it was filled with all of these groundbreaking types of artwork
It was a totally bewitching exhibition because you go to an exhibition normally
and you wouldn't be allowed to touch anything. This was the absolute opposite
and not only were you encouraged to touch things but you are obliged to
participate because you had to take your shoes off to go into the sand
And then you'd go into these 'Penetrables' where you would brush aside a piece of hessian
and have to explore through this tropical delight really
It was a place
where people could come, could move freely and enter into spaces that were
filled with surprises. They wouldn't necessarily know what would happen
inside these 'Penetrables', and it was exactly the opposite of what people
would understand as 'high art'.
It was about engaging people and local people
started realizing there was a sandpit in their local art gallery and mums came in
with their pushchairs and got their kids playing in the sand
There were businessmen coming in on their lunch breaks and listening to the parrots that
were squawking around in 'Tropicália' at that time
Hélio just adored the participation of everybody
'"Tropicália" is a kind of map, it's a map of
Rio, and it's a map of my imagination. It's a map you go into'
'Tropicália' is nothing but a problem. It was a problem for the artist in his own day
and it's a problem for curators and conservators now
It's like, what are we going do with 'Tropicália'?
How are we going to show it in the right way? How do we
get across the cultural importance that this work had, broadly, but what it
meant for the artist and the challenges that he faced in creating it?
'It's only by furiously bringing down that we can raise up anything that will be valid and
palpable: our reality'
Gilberto Gil told me, 'we are under a
violent political situation. Our music has to have some violence to respond'
And Hélio had that in pure form, you know. He had it radically
Oiticica was very
interested in that sense of liberty, and something that emerged deliberately from
living in a repressive regime in Brazil, but just in general, he was always
pushing the boundaries of what art could do and how it could free people
Well I think, as it developed, I think he was trying to take art off the walls in the
galleries and put them out there in the street where the people could enjoy them,
just like they enjoyed dancing Samba at carnival. He wanted it to be of the
people, that was very much his message