Throughout the past decade, Portuguese artist VHILS – born Alexandre Farto [Lisbon, 1987] – has been making a name for himself by taking apart and reassembling found objects. He uses a multitude of materials and formats to voice his stance on the city, which he bases on his experience of living and working in Shanghai 上海, Moscow, New York, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Paris. VHILS now condenses his findings in his home town Lisbon - in an exhibition at Lisbon’s Electricity Museum – curated by João Pinharanda and aptly named ‘Dissection’ – drawing from his work to produce a collective memory of the city. It is the artist’s first big solo show. MovingCities published, in the October-November 2014 issue of Mark magazine #52, an interview with Portuguese street artist: read VHILS | Dissecting the City.

Extract from VHILS | Dissecting the City:

'Debris is a prime material for me,’ he says. ‘I like to use material that has been expelled from the city. I think this comes from my background in graffiti, which was for many years seen as something bad. But when you use it in the right way, graffiti allows you to look at the city differently.’

Farto grew up in Seixal, a city on the less glamorous south side of the Tagus estuary. At the age of 13 he was already roaming the streets, exploring warehouses and railway yards. Admitting that he ‘went through a lot of shit’ as a kid who often got into trouble, he also realizes that his formative years have had a lasting effect on him. ‘When I was growing up, Seixal was a small-scale, almost rural area,’ he says. ‘But during the golden years of the 1990s, a construction boom hit Lisbon like a bomb, and concrete sprang up all around me.’