Vhils: ruas com rosto: estudo de caso sobre o percurso artístico de Alexandre Farto

Abstract

This work, in the context of the Art Sciences and focusing on a case study of the artistic practice of Alexandre Farto, also known as Vhils, has the following research objectives: a) to understand the continuous presence and role of portrait in interventions created by Vhils, by analyzing its multiple dimensions as an aesthetic, a plastic, a social and a political modality; b) to analyze the connections between traditional imagery modalities, such as portrait and the new modalities explored in street art; c) to analyze the cleavages between the mainstream art and the outsider art of Alexandre Farto's work and career; d) to identify the contributions of Vhils's work in public places so as to broaden the scope of street art. Starting from a visual imaginary of the art developed in the street, especially from the seventies onwards, in the twentieth century -, and covering issues related to space, artists and different expressions – at first, we intended to characterize the different dynamics of the graffiti and street art manifestations, and then, to contextualize and analyze the interventions of the artist Vhils, by giving a greater emphasis to the work developed in the urban space. Outside the institutionalized space, art submits to its own system of appreciation, differing from that which the works of art exhibited in museums and galleries are subjected to, which can be seen as a strategy to make reality and the public come closer, and which is characterized by the relationship between the work and the place, inevitably leading to a fusion between art and the social context, that integrates the public space and transforms the work of art. In this sense, we analyzed a set of Vhils’s artistic interventions where this relationship with the community is closer and whose dynamics involves the participation and / or collaboration of these individuals in the artistic processes. The city is seen by the artist as something ephemeral and transitory that has long since ceased to be stable, and where everything seems to happen simultaneously. Taking this reality into account, we analyze how Vhils reflects on this urban environment that influences the community in the formation of its individual and collective identity.