Humour, the final and perhaps most important component of da Cunha’s practice, is rooted in certain ambivalence towards the conditions of the modern object. Even when the artist is working on canvas (Nude, 2012), a series of large brown circles emerging across the surface give way to a certain threedimensional quality. Viewed from an angle, the protruding peeks of the rounded sunhats begin to suggest the physicality of human nipples, exposing the surreal dimension of da Cunha’s metaphoric language. A worn out car tire repurposed as a flower pot, framed depictions of popular icons from Brazilian culture, and a seemingly abstract painting made from deck chairs and rugs, form the corpus of Cunha’s incessant dichotomising of singular objects. The subtle monumentality of the work may be imbedded in minimal strategies of mid-century modernism; but there is always more than meets the eye alone. As ready-mades cast in a tropical irony, such acts are demonstrative of how any use of an object is an appropriative act.