Candy Man Candy

Ernesto Neto invites us to enter the vibrant street culture of his native city. In this gallery, a huge web of colored threads crocheted together surrounds visitors, encouraging them to be participants in the rich Carioca culture.

“Baleiro Bala,” the expression in Portuguese that lends itself to the title of this section, is the song by a samba school that tells the story of a camelô or street candy vendor who works in the poorest parts of Rio near the train tracks. Based on the figure of the street vendor, an example of individual survival, the artist holds up popular Brazilian culture through its different representative elements. Red, yellow, blue, orange, purple, and green strings-made by a studio near Neto's own- are knotted together overhead to make a huge web. Wherever you look, you will discover long columns that hang down from the weight of their contents, since they are partly filled with beer or soda cans of the same color, large green coconuts, or polystyrene balls.