Tropicalia installation

The artists involved created a new exotic version of pop, being as influenced by psychedelia as it was by samba, bossa nova and more traditional South American genres. As well as the musicians, the cover art for the album became just as iconic. The idea was to shake up the status quo and create something that threatened the establishment.

Singer, dancer and actress Carmen Miranda was also a strong influence and is said to be a precursor of the movement. Miranda came to prominence in the s when she starred in a dozen Hollywood-produced movies. She was often dressed in Bahiana-esque costumes with tropical fruit adorning her head. Passersby could see Gerakaris at work on the installation, which also features a selection of paintings, works on paper, an audio installation, and large-scale graphic window displays facing Main Street.

This is honestly the largest amount of pictorial material I've ever created for one site. For the RIVAA installation, he used a knife to "cut out certain key elements from the printed material for the baroque visual effect of segments exploding and expanding beyond the borders, like a giant wall collage.

The site-specific installation wraps around corners and extends onto the floors of the gallery, and is intended to reveal different meanings and layers on each viewing. Gerakaris collaborated with composer-producer Trevor Gureckis on a soundtrack that incorporates everything from jungle sounds to percussive polyrhythms and Afrobeat music.

Inspired by his upbringing in rural New Hampshire and extensive travels with his parents, both artists, Gerakaris's art focuses on "the intersection of culture and nature," he said. It was an incredible incubator for learning how to think critically on one's own. He credited art professor Stan Taft's painting courses with his "awakenings about the physiological and psychological effects of color, and color perception on the emotional experience of art," he said.

Color awakens something deep in the mind and soul. This Brazilian take on the tropical was replete with live plants and parrots, enclosures modeled on favela architecture, and a television set.

The art movement flourished for a mere five years, from to Yet it has put Brazil firmly on the world map of creativity.