Cildo Meireles is one of the greatest names in Brazilian contemporary art, whose work is most directly connected to conceptualism. Active since the 1960s, with his work initially shaped by the context of the military dictatorship, Cildo participated in some of the most significant events in the history of Brazilian art, such as the "Salão da Bússola," which took place in 1969 at the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro – considered one of the initial milestones of conceptual art in Brazil. Another highlight was the event "From the Body to the Earth," organized by critic Frederico Morais in 1970 at the Municipal Park of Belo Horizonte, where Cildo carried out his legendary intervention "Tiradentes: Totem-Monument to the Political Prisoner," setting fire to live chickens in reference to the violent and authoritarian moment the country was experiencing.

Still in 1970, the young Cildo participated in the historic group exhibition "Information" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), which brought together much of the conceptual work from the 1960s. The artist also participated in the 1989 show "Magiciens de la Terre," held at the Centre Pompidou and Halle de la Villette in Paris – an ambitious project that marked the inclusion of productions that escape the cultural models defined by Europe and the United States in the European art institutional circuit.

Throughout his career, Cildo Meireles explores the complexity of language and images, articulating connections between the poetic, political, and philosophical. His work is also characterized by the appropriation of everyday objects and their direct insertion into the world, without the mediation of institutional spaces. One of the main examples of this endeavor is the series "Insertions into Ideological Circuits" (1970), which consists of printing subversive phrases on banknotes and Coca-Cola bottles and returning these objects to daily circulation during the military dictatorship.

In the 1990s, the artist received retrospectives of his work at the IVAM Centre del Carme in Valencia (1995) and at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (1999).

Cildo Meireles was the second Brazilian artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Tate Modern in London in 2008. The year before, an exhibition dedicated to Hélio Oiticica had been presented.