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Sodic Portal A, 2nd floor, Office A210 , Km 38 Cairo/ Alexandria Desert Road, Egypt
info@artdegypte.com
Sodic Portal A, 2nd floor, Office A210 , Km 38 Cairo/ Alexandria Desert Road, Egypt
info@artdegypte.com

Alexandre Farto aka Vhils

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Alexandre Farto aka Vhils
Brief info

BIOGRAPHY

Alexandre Farto aka Vhils (b. 1987) is a Portuguese artist who has developed a distinctive visual language based on the removal of surface layers from walls and other media using unconventional tools and techniques. Starting in the early 2000s through graffiti, his work peels back the layers of urban environments, reflecting on themes of identity, memory, urbanisation, and global homogenisation. Destroying to create, Vhils turns materials discarded by the city into poetic visual statements, humanising forgotten spaces through large-scale portraits that capture the essence of anonymous individuals. His practice spans a wide range of media, from bas-relief carving to stencil painting, metal etching, pyrotechnic explosions, and sculptural installations. He has also worked extensively with film and video, having directed music videos, short films, and stage productions. His works can be found in public spaces across the globe and have been exhibited in institutions including MUCA – Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art (Munich), MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (Lisbon), MIMA Museum (Brussels), Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati), Le Centquatre-Paris, CAFA Art Museum (Beijing), Hong Kong Contemporary Art Foundation, Palais de Tokyo (Paris), and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Vhils is constantly experimenting and expanding his visual language, questioning the material and symbolic make-up of contemporary cities. His works, often created in collaboration with local communities, act as a mirror to the social fabric they inhabit, offering a raw and emotional reading of today’s urban condition.

CONCEPT

Doors are the architecture of intimacy. Collected from the streets of Cairo, these gateways carry memories and gestures; they have witnessed meetings and partings, unions and moments of quiet closeness, offered shelter, and concealed secrets. In Doors of Cairo, Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto aka Vhils assembles these reclaimed fragments collected in the city, transforming everyday objects into a temporary monument. Placed in the desert, the doors shed their literal function and become thresholds, portals between past and present. They represent individual memories and allude to collective histories built across generations and civilizations.

Each surface is carved with faces and features of individuals, a mark of Vhils’ groundbreaking carving technique. Others bear patterns echoing craftsmanship. The contrast with the permanence and monumentality of the Egyptian pyramids only highlights the ephemeral nature of this contemporary monument built not for pharaohs, but for the anonymous lives and stories of those who shaped this land. For those who lived here, who labored in the construction of these histories, and for those who continue to pass through it today.

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