[1] His father, who encouraged Meireles' creativity, worked for the Indian Protection Service and their family traveled extensively within rural Brazil.

"[3] During his time in rural Brazil, Meireles learned the beliefs of the Tupi people which he later incorporated into some of his works in order to highlight their marginalization in, or complete disappearance from, Brazilian society and politics.

He began his study of art in 1963 at the District Federal Cultural Foundation in Brasília, under the Peruvian painter and ceramist Felix Barrenechea.

[6] These artists, as well as Meireles, were all concerned with blurring the boundary between what is art and what is life, and responding to current political situations within their pieces.

"[8] In the early 1970s he developed a political art project that aimed to reach a wide audience while avoiding censorship called Insertions Into Ideological Circuits, which was continued until 1976.

[13] The second room is called Spill/Environment and consists solely of a large pool of red ink spilled from a small bottle on the floor, evoking mental associations with blood.

Art historian Anne Dezeuze has commented that the "cinematic" installation as a whole articulates a certain sense of menace within participants because of the intense repetition of the color red throughout the three rooms.

[14] Like most of Meireles' other artworks, Red Shift takes on political undertones when examined in light of Brazil's military dictatorship which lasted throughout the creation and exhibition of this piece.

[13] For instance, the red liquid pouring into the washbasin has been seen by some art historians as a visual representation of the blood of victims murdered by government authorities.

According to Meireles in a statement he made about the artwork in 1970, this region is "the wild side, the jungle in one's head, without the lustre of intelligence or reason...our origins."

"[13] In the same statement, he notes that he wants Southern Cross to be perceived as a physical representation of the memory of the Tupi ("people whose history is legends and fables") and a warning to modernity of the growing self-confidence of the primordial which will eventually result in an overtaking of the urban by the natural.

The tiny cube is meant to be placed alone in the middle of an empty room in order to emphasize the reality and the power of indigenous belief systems in the context of Eurocentric modernism.

The project was achieved by printing images and messages onto various items that were already widely circulated and which had value discouraging them being destroyed, such as Coca-Cola bottles (which were recycled by way of a deposit scheme) and banknotes.

Meireles screen-printed texts onto the Coca-Cola bottles that were supposed to encourage the buyer to become aware of their personal role in a consumerist society.

Building off of that concept, Meireles also used money as a theme and produced his own replica banknotes and coins (1974–1978) which appeared very similar to genuine Brazilian and US currency but with zero denominations clearly written on them, e.g.

[19] The maze is composed of "velvet museum ropes, street barriers, garden fences, blinds, railings, and aquariums" and in the center of it is a three-meter ball of cellophane.

[20] Meireles notes that an essential part of Through is the sense of psychological unease that comes from the participant's realization of the different sensory capacities and capabilities between the eyes and the body.

"[13] Meireles drew some of his inspiration for this installation from writer Jorge Luis Borges, whose subject matter sometimes included the concept of the labyrinth.

Paul Herkenhoff points out that Babel also has autobiographical meaning for Meireles, as radio was a common method of widespread communication in Brazil during the artist's youth.

Meireles considers his first exhibition to have taken place in 1965, when one of his canvases and two of his drawings were accepted by the Segundo Salão Nacional de Arte Moderna in Brasília.

[4] This exhibition then moved to the Museu d'Art Contemporani in Barcelona, and later to the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Mexico City until January 10, 2010.