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hammer in hand

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Known as Vhils, Alexandre Farto is a hot name in the world of street art these days. The city is his canvas and the faces of its residents are his preferred subjects. In the cracks of neglected building walls he creates his art, but he has also exhibited in gallery spaces, like Museu da Electricidade in Lisbon, Portugal.
 
In recognition of his talent, Vhils received one of the highest decorations in Portugal, the Commendation of the Order of Infante D. Henrique. He also created a music video for U2 and appeared on the list of Forbes’ “30 under 30” as one of the most successful young artists. Hammer in hand, the 28 year-old promises to get to the core of walls and restore stories that the passage of time has condemned to oblivion.
He recently created fado singer Amália Rodrigues’ face in cobblestone in Lisbon, and Macau is in his sights for 2015. 
 
 
Macau CLOSER: Did growing up in Seixal, on the south bank of the Tagus River and Lisbon, in a suburban area and with all the social, economic and cultural aspects that come with that, influence your choice of street art?
 
Vhils – It has undoubtedly had a decisive influence in making me the person I am today, in all aspects. I fully believe that the environment in which we grow up and live in plays a key role in shaping our personalities through various factors. My work has addressed this very question of the interdependent relationship between people and the environment, based on the concept of mutual moulding. We shape the environment, as much as it moulds us. This relationship works in both directions. The area where I grew up was a mixture of industrial elements inserted in a still half rural landscape that, over the years, was transformed by an intense process of urban development. 
 
You began to graffiti walls inspired by what you saw. Did you do this in order to give rise to your artistic creativity or more as a way to provoke?
 
When I started doing graffiti I did not have any artistic aspirations. In a way, it was graffiti that awakened my interest in visual arts. At the time I was very young, I did not think about things objectively. For me graffiti was pure rebellion, vandalism, a way to spend time with friends who had a creative side but it also had another element, one of risk, urban exploration. As I grew older, I began to think seriously about what I wanted to do in public spaces and developed work that sought to interact with people and the environment. What I do today is not graffiti, but I see graffiti as my training: it taught me to deal with complex realities, to read urban space in a comprehensive and thorough way, working with certain surfaces, materials and tools. Much of my work has absorbed these concepts and techniques and makes use of them in other contexts.
 
Is it fair to say that you take advantage of uselessness of things, creating your art out of materials that society no longer has use for? 
 
I have tried to develop a reflection on identity and life in contemporary urban societies based on a reading of contrasts between the positive and negative aspects that it offers us. This includes both a reading of their physical spaces as the ideological models that promote and sustain their organization and development. The fundamental premise has been to work with what the city itself offers, both materially and conceptually. I live in the urban space and I draw on its vitality, the interaction it provides, what it is as a human achievement. But I also recognize it as a cancer with its dimensions of chaos and waste, the ideological aspects that it represents and the way it has perverted both human nature and the natural world. I try to contrast this irrational waste of resources by using materials made obsolete by this rampant march of development, but they are materials that have a specific connection with the context in which each project is developed.
 
Looking at your work, everyone will have its own interpretation, of course, but what is the message you actually want to convey?
 
There is general content and there is specific content linked to projects and to local realities which are developed; and there are those linked to how certain communities are affected by development, and expropriation measures affecting survival and identity. 
 
When did you first pick up a hammer and break into a wall? Was that the turning point?
 
The first time I hammered a wall was in 2007, and yes, it was a defining moment. It was a little experiment that, despite having very modest results, pointed me in a new direction. Gradually I perfected the technique and through experience it became what it is today, a technique that has been applied in numerous places, and which is the base for the “Scratching the Surface” project.
 
People question how you can work so closely on something yet create something so big. Does your creative process have a method?
 
Yes, of course. It would be impossible to develop this type of work without a method. There is a large part which is left to chance, the aim is to intervene to a certain extent and then stop the action and let nature and time do the rest, but there is an important process behind it, pointing the work in a direction. In general, work starts with a base image, usually one or more photographs, which relate to the project. Working on the computer, I create a composition divided into several layers in order to create contrast and depth. This is then applied to the material on which it will be developed, either on a wall or a door. On larger scale pieces I usually project the image on the wall and paint it in sketched form. In other cases I paint directly on the surface or use a stencil. Once the image is in place the excavation phase begins.
 
Why the choice of the human figure and particularly the face? It is an attempt to populate the dying spaces in the city? Who are these people you portray?
 
The work explores the question of identity a lot, hence the use of portraits. On the one hand, the intention of giving faces to the walls is a symbolic act of restoring a human dimension that has been lost in cities, especially in those dying spaces, devoid of character.
 
On the other hand, it is also a gesture of appreciation of the average individual in opposition to the visual saturation based on the cult of celebrity, so fashionable nowadays, in advertising and media. Generally speaking, the people depicted are anonymous public citizens whom I crossed paths with in several locations. Some have a specific connection with where they are depicted, but others are transported to other places to enable the comprehensive, broad nature of reflection.
 
Does Macau have good locations for the faces of your art?
 
Undoubtedly, especially the older parts. Not the historic parts, but the more industrial ones. The faces that have earned the wrinkles of time attract me most.
 
What plans do you have for this city? And neighbouring places like Hong Kong?
 
I’m at the assembly stage of a small workspace in Hong Kong that will facilitate the development of various projects in the region. These plans obviously include Macau, which I hope to start visiting more frequently. For various reasons I really want to develop work here and I have some projects in the planning stage. But I prefer to announce them at the right time, when they are confirmed.
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