Caixa de fazer amor

Teresinha Soares’s work combines a free celebration of the erotic and the feminine with a critique of the repressive policies of the Brazilian dictatorship (1964–85) and of the oppression of women in patriarchal society. Her Caixa de fazer amor is an assemblage in pop art colors. In its original conception the viewer would interact with the work by turning a handle connected to a windmill that, when spun, would set in motion a large red plush heart inside the box; the heart’s playful and overblown motion imitated the way a heart beats when one is in love. Another heart—this one split though with the potential to be joined—was formed in the upper part of the box by two faces almost touching each other. Both comic and celebratory, this work speaks of the tribulations of love and desire.