“Tropicália”
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA Chicago)
“I CHOOSE TROPICÁLIA not because it is liberal but because it is libertine.” With this pithy turn of phrase, poet Torquato Neto put forth two of the Brazilian movement’s most provocative claims: first, that it provided an ideological alternative to defensive nationalisms, both Left and Right, in late-’60s Brazil; and second, that this alternative was constructed on an aesthetics of punning and resignification, a revaluing of words and positions, a flipping of public platforms into playgrounds that would invert the so-called predicament of Brazil’s tropical malaise into a vibrant cultural legacy