TUPYCOLÉ consists out of ice lollies in the shape of body parts such as hands, feet, boobs, ears,mouths, noses and hearts, available in different colourful flavours, made into refreshing ediblesculptures to be distributed to the public in actions that are indulging, tasting, fleshy, andanthropophagical. TUPYCOLÉ mixes two words - TUPY, the largest indigenous language trunk inBrazil and PICOLÉ, the word for ice-lolly.
Ice-lollies are universally popular over the summer and this picturesque tropical action takesadvantage of that to evoke some of the most rooted Brazilian iconography, filled with images referringto the practice of anthropophagy and its rituals. The anthropomorphism of the ice sculptures aims toraise a reflection upon the history of colonization, establishing relationships that refer to the firstencounter between the European and the native Brazilians, bringing together with it the sugar andcocoa trade, slavery, violence, and the stories of Tiradentes, the Brazilian Independence hero; HansStaden, the German that survived being eaten by cannibals in the XVI century; Eckhout, the Dutchpainter that revealed to the “Old World” the first images of the “New World”.
TUPYCOLÉ reflects on the Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibal Manifesto, 1928) by Oswald de Andrade,the text that is considered a landmark of Brazilian Modernism movement.Through this work, OPAVIVARÁ! are evoking the strangeness in which the colonial process hashappened and still is done. But the fact that ice lollies are tasty and indulgent brings in what theyconsider the very traces of Brazilian culture with a sort of Carnavalesque atmosphere that plays withinversions of the laws, a period in which all that was hidden or not allowed is practiced in the publicspace, freely around streets and squares.The idea of pleasure involved in sucking the lolly proposes a more pleasurable way of "eating" anotherculture, the words of the Manifesto Antropófago in which "Happiness is the real proof" or “Before twoPortuguese discovered Brazil, Brazil discovered happiness.”