Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs. Antonio José de Barros Carvalho e Mello Mourão, also known as Tunga (1952-2016), was much more than just a trendy Brazilian sculptor. This artist, who grew up in the intellectual fervor of the 1970s, immersed in the poetry of his father Gerardo Melo Mourão and the political resistance of his activist mother, redefined our relationship to matter and space with an audacity that still shakes the sanitized walls of our contemporary museums.
Let’s begin with his fascination for alchemy and the transformation of matter, which is not merely a stylistic effect but the very foundation of his artistic practice. When Tunga assembles lead, glass, hair, and crystals in his monumental installations, he does not merely create sculptures; he orchestrates metamorphoses worthy of the greatest hermetic treatises. His masterful installation À la Lumière des Deux Mondes at the Louvre in 2005, the first contemporary artwork to occupy this temple of classical art, was not just an institutional provocation. It represented the culmination of his alchemical quest, transforming the glass pyramid into a crucible where the most disparate materials fused into an improbable synthesis. This approach echoes Gaston Bachelard’s thoughts in The Formation of the Scientific Mind, where the philosopher explores the transition from alchemical thinking to scientific rationality. Like Bachelard, Tunga understood that material imagination precedes and nourishes rational knowledge. His works are not illustrations of scientific theories but experimental laboratories where matter frees itself from the constraints of classical physics to explore uncharted potentialities.
Take, for instance, his series La Voie Humide (2011-2014), a title explicitly referencing alchemical tradition. In these works, Tunga does not simply juxtapose materials; he creates chain reactions where each element influences and transforms the others. The steel tripods supporting his sculptures are not mere supports but energy conductors linking different states of matter. Earthen vessels filled with crystals and sponges become matrices where symbolic transmutations occur. This approach reveals a deep understanding of alchemical thought, not as naïve pseudoscience but as a complex system of transformation where matter and spirit are inextricably linked.
This transformative dimension takes on particular significance in his performances, notably in Xifópagas Capilares (1984), where two twin girls are connected by their hair in an enigmatic choreography. This emblematic work does not merely explore the boundaries between the individual body and the collective body; it literally embodies Antonin Artaud’s theory of the “body without organs”, later developed by Gilles Deleuze. In this revolutionary philosophical perspective, the body is no longer conceived as a biological machine with predetermined functions but as a field of intensities and becomings. The intertwined bodies of Tunga’s performers become vectors of transformation, experimental zones where the boundaries between self and other, organic and inorganic, blur in a cosmic dance that challenges our habitual categories of thought.
This performance is not an isolated case but part of a systematic exploration of the body’s possibilities as an artistic medium. In Inside Out, Upside Down (1997), presented at documenta X, Tunga pushes this reflection further by creating an installation-performance where men in suits, carrying briefcases, follow precise trajectories inspired by particle accelerators. When their paths cross, the contents of their briefcases—gelatin body fragments—spill onto the ground in a meticulously choreographed sequence. This work draws a striking parallel between quantum physics and the theater of everyday life, suggesting that our most mundane reality is permeated by mysterious forces that only art can reveal.
Tunga creates works that function as continuous systems, infinite loops where each element refers to another in an endless chain of meanings. His installation-film Ão (1981) is the perfect example. Projected in the Dois Irmãos tunnel in Rio de Janeiro, this work transforms the architectural space into a mathematical torus, accompanied by a sound loop of Cole Porter’s Night and Day sung by Frank Sinatra. This is pure Tunga: a dizzying fusion of non-Euclidean geometry, urban architecture, and popular culture. He doesn’t merely juxtapose these references; he makes them literally copulate like words in a surrealist poem, creating conceptual hybrids that defy rational understanding while stimulating our imagination.
This systemic approach also extends to his unique relationship with drawing. Unlike many contemporary artists who use drawing as a mere preparatory tool, Tunga makes it a central element of his practice. His drawings, particularly those from the series Vê-Nus (1976-1977), are not sketches but autonomous works where lines seem animated with a life of their own. The biomorphic forms emerging from these traces evoke mysterious organs or imaginary constellations, creating a visual universe where the microscopic and the macroscopic converge in a cosmic dance.
His first solo exhibition at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro in 1974, provocatively titled Museu da Masturbação Infantil, already revealed this singular approach to drawing. The abstract and figurative forms presented there did not aim to represent reality but to explore the erotic tensions inherent in the very act of drawing lines on paper. This early exhibition already announced the themes that would obsess Tunga throughout his career: the transformation of matter, the fusion of opposites, and the exploration of the boundaries between the rational and the irrational.
This obsession with metamorphosis is not merely an aesthetic whim but is rooted in a profound philosophical tradition dating back to Heraclitus and his concept of panta rhei (everything flows). But where the Greek philosopher saw a universal cosmological principle, Tunga found a creative principle he applied to all aspects of his artistic practice. His works do not represent change; they are change in action. Each installation and performance becomes a microcosm where matter, space, and time bend to the laws of an alternative physics, a physics of the imagination that offers us a glimpse of unforeseen possibilities of existence.
This approach reaches its zenith in the two pavilions dedicated to him at Instituto Inhotim, a true open-air museum nestled in the Brazilian jungle. These spaces are not mere exhibition sites but immersive environments where Tunga’s works dialogue with one another and their natural surroundings. In True Rouge (1997), for example, nets filled with glass bottles, beads, and red fabrics create a suspended installation that evokes both a scientific experiment and a mystical ritual. The work seems to pulse with a life of its own, as if it were in perpetual metamorphosis, challenging our usual perception of time and space.
His use of materials is equally revolutionary. Tunga does not limit himself to noble or traditional materials; he explores the expressive possibilities of substances often overlooked in contemporary art: gelatin, makeup, gum arabic, natural sponges. In Cooking Crystals (2010), he even uses growing crystals as sculptural elements, creating a work that literally continues to grow and transform after its installation. This approach resonates with philosopher Gilbert Simondon’s theories on individuation, where form is not imposed on matter from the outside but emerges from the inherent potentialities of the materials themselves.
What makes Tunga’s work so relevant today is that it transcends traditional dichotomies between nature and culture, science and magic, reason and imagination. In a world obsessed with rigid categories and impermeable boundaries, his art reminds us that reality is more fluid and mysterious than our systems of classification suggest. He does not seek to resolve these contradictions but to proliferate them, creating a space where uncertainty becomes a creative force rather than a weakness to overcome.
His influence on Brazilian and international contemporary art is considerable, even if it is not always fully recognized. Artists like Ernesto Neto and Jac Leirner have acknowledged their debt to his radical vision of art as a process of transformation. But Tunga’s legacy is not limited to his stylistic or conceptual influence. It lies in his ability to make us see the world differently, to remind us that the reality we take for granted is only a temporary configuration in a universe in perpetual metamorphosis.
When visiting Tunga’s permanent installations at Instituto Inhotim today, one is struck by their relevance. In a world facing unprecedented ecological, social, and epistemological crises, his vision of art as capable of transforming not only matter but also our perception of reality seems more pertinent than ever. His works remind us that true artistic creation lies not in reproducing the known but in exploring the unknown, not in confirming our certainties but in radically challenging them.
And if you think I’m indulging in lyrical hyperbole, I dare you to spend an hour in front of his True Rouge installation at Inhotim. You will emerge either completely transformed or utterly lost. In either case, Tunga will have achieved his goal: to make you doubt your most ingrained certainties about the nature of art and reality itself. For perhaps his greatest accomplishment lies in creating an art that does not merely represent the world but reinvents it, a roll of the dice that abolishes our usual categories to open vertiginous perspectives on what art can be.