Hélio Oiticica, B33 Box Bólide 18, Homage to Cara de Cavalo (B33 Bólide caixa 18, Homenagem à Cara de Cavalo), 1965-66

Narrator: This is another of Oiticica’s interactive Bólides: a box with one hinged side, which viewers originally could have raised and lowered.  But this one contains a photograph of a man lying dead on the ground. Oiticica made this work soon after the military coup of 1964, which led to a brutal dictatorship. One of its casualties was the man pictured here.

Christopher Dunn: Cara de Cavalo was one of these figures who was a petty thief, a drug dealer.

Narrator: Christopher Dunn.

Christopher Dunn: He was a famous outlaw who had had several run-ins with the police, and was eventually hunted down and killed in a hail of bullets. And Oiticica was friends with him.

Narrator: Like many artists and intellectuals in the early 1960s, Oiticica had begun to spend a good deal of time in the favelas—working-class, hillside communities surrounding Rio. He was especially drawn to Mangueira, home of a famous samba school. But unlike many of his peers, he did not go to the favelas looking for the “true” Samba, or the “real” Brazil. If you’d like to hear more about his relationship to these communities, please tap to continue.