The Queer Politics of Hélio Oiticica's Babylonian Cinema

The Queer Politics of Hélio Oiticica’s Babylonian Cinema Examining Hélio Oiticica’s Lens-Based Practice in Relation to Underground Cinema and the Gay Rights Movement in the United States Abstract Hélio Oiticica (1937–80) first came to terms with his homosexuality in the comunidades (communities), also known as the favelas, of Brazil during the mid-1960s. In a country where most of the populace is staunchly Catholic, same-sex practices were both morally persecuted and legally prosecuted. As a result, Oiticica remained publicly closeted until he went abroad. By the time he had settled in New York during his self-imposed exile (1970–78), a year after the watershed Stonewall Riots in the summer of 1969, Oiticica was “out” and living unapologetically as a gay man. Influenced by the ongoing social movements for gay rights, Black Power, and women’s liberation, the artist began to make aspects of his practice explicitly queer, adding to his politicization of aesthetics and personal pursuit of states of delirium. He even redubbed Manhattan “Babylon” after the ancient Mesopotamian city known for its excessive luxury, consumption, and moral—i.e., sexual—decadence. His newfound queer artistic preoccupations arose in more than one series during his self-exilic era but came to the fore in his cinematic practice—which consisted of experimental film scripts for mostly unrealized projects, short films, and unique multisensory quasi-cinemas (1973–75). Oiticica saw the films of Andy Warhol and Jack Smith, befriending the latter, then embarked on his own experimental film projects abroad by combining the confrontational, marginal agenda he developed in the comunidades with the exaggerated, queer sensibilities of “camp.” Indeed, he turned to the exoticized and exaggerated clichés of Latinx sexuality to invent a new genre of “Tropicamp.” Oiticica’s concerns with sexual politics, it will be argued here, stemmed from his advocacy for the marginal/marginalized, which expanded in New York to embrace his own queer identity.