(Palmares, Brazil, 1952-Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2016)
Known as Tunga, he was one of the leaders of the Brazilian contemporary art scene. He trained as an architect and urban planner, but from a young age he felt a predilection for the creative freedom of the art world. At only 22 years old, the Museum of Modern Art in Rio hosted his first solo exhibition, titled Museum of Child Masturbation (1974). From then on, sex and play appeared as components of his creations, which could take the form of sculpture, video, objects, ceramics, performance, drawing and installation. The materials he worked with were equally diverse; from skulls, teeth. He created a metaphorical and erotic universe, where the surreal collided with everyday life. He also took performance to its ultimate consequences, generating its own grammar and a way of interacting with the different context, opening a new space for the practice of action art in Brazil. He participated in the Venice Biennales (1995), Havana (1994) or the Kassel dOCUMENTA (1997), until the monumental installation A la lumiere des deux mondes, with which he became the first contemporary artist in the world to exhibit in the Louvre Museum, in 2006.
banquet_metabolism and communication