Tropicália

Tropicália was the name given to an explosion of cultural creativity in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in 1968, as Brazil's military regime tightened its grip on power. The movement spanned music, visual art, theatre, cinema and poetry, blending local Brazilian culture with international avant-garde and pop influences in a spirit of radical "cultural cannibalism." In music it was embodied by Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and the band Os Mutantes; the name itself came from the artist Hélio Oiticica's installation Tropicália (1967), a labyrinth of sand, plants and a television that ironically played on the stereotyped image of a tropical paradise. Tropicália art was at once festive and critical, mocking both provincialism and the blind imitation of foreign models, and its oppositional stance led to the persecution and exile of its leaders. For Ukrainian audiences the experience is valuable as an example of how art under authoritarian pressure finds a language of resistance through irony, hybridity and celebratory energy.