As a loop of 16-mm film winds like a haunted model train around a darkened room and through a projector, the projected image shows an endless journey through a curved tunnel outside of Rio de Janeiro. It was fitting that this installation, Ão, 1981, opened the first North American retrospective of work by Tunga, because it merges seamlessly with the intricate, punning narrative that spirals through the Brazilian artist’s oeuvre. A fictional accident inside the tunnel seen in the film, for example, is woven into the network of fantastic events in one of the artist’s published texts.

Despite the