Nossa! Brazilian music & culture

If you deal in the world of politics or finance then it’s probably wise to take a serious attitude to your work. For the rest of us, though, it’s sometimes best to follow the advice of seminal thinker/all-round hero Nathan Barley and Keep It Foolish. Right now that pearl of wisdom appears to be the very ’credos’ of the Brazilian creative world.

Take the Museum of Modern Art’s recently-unveiled Destination Brazil collection. The stand-out work, by a country mile, is all laced with a healthy dose of the playful and absurd.

Winged Jugs and Ears Cup by Estudio Manus, São Paulo

Chalkboard Vase and Whiteboard Clock by Ricardo Saint-Clair

Or take Le Sens Propre, Cisma‘s excellent new spot for Adobe’s cool CS4 artist series. It’s a different kind of different, but the Japanese-Brazilian film-maker creates a stunning, surreal world where soft is hard and donuts unravel into pink socks.

Silliness in creativity is a difficult thing to get right – which is why Pot Noodle fails where Flight of the Conchords succeeds. But when it works, it really works.

Now where can I buy a copy of Photoshop?