'TropicAlia' Paradise; Brazil's colorful culture, served with a political edge.

Byline: Jennie Yabroff

In 1967, Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica put together an installation at Rio de Janeiro's "New Brazilian Objectivity" show featuring sand, trees, gravel, fabric panels and a cage holding two live parrots. Visitors were encouraged to take off their shoes and stroll through the exhibit, which Oiticica called "TropicAlia." A year later, Brazilian musicians Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes and Caetano Veloso borrowed the name for a pop album, and the TropicAlia movement was born.

The music, art, theater, fashion and architecture of that movement is on glorious display in "TropicAlia: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture" at the Bronx Museum (through January 28, then possibly traveling to Brazil). Part cultural celebration and part political protest, TropicAlia was a response by Brazil's counterculture to the country's increasingly repressive regime and the rise of favelas . Two of Oiticica's installations, which he termed "penetrables," are recreated in the show, and they epitomize the brief movement's sensibility: sunny, playful and inviting, but also politically charged. While the parrots are fun and the sand feels good between the toes, Oiticica's "TropicAlia" is no day at the beach. The fabric-panel passageways evoke the warrenlike structure of the favelas, and the recorded music and TV at the end of the maze comment on the commercialization of Brazilian culture.

Many of "TropicAlia's" exhibits encourage interaction. In Oiticica's"Eden," visitors can dip their toes in a wading pool, and crawl through sand. Lygia Pape's "Roda dos prazeres" (Wheel of delights) invites visitors to sample colorful flavored liquids from a circular arrangement of bowls.

Made with primary colors, simple shapes and a mix of text and images, many of the works outwardly resemble American pop art of ...