I was born in 1987 and I live and work in Lisbon. I have a BA and MA in Fashion Design, but I’ve been painting since I was a kid. My great-grandfather was a photographer and my grandfather was a painter – I remember going to his house and instead of playing with toys, I used to watch him painting and sit doodling next to him.

To be honest, I think that it’s just part of my personality. It’s all connected: how I relate to my work as an artist and how I interact as a friend/son/boyfriend/brother on a more personal level.

Material exploration is not the focus of my practice. However, I do consider new materials and new ways of translating my thoughts depending on the work I’m developing and the idea behind it. But it’s not so much about bringing in unconventional materials rather than creating the right environment to achieve what I envisage.

Not at all. I try to never mix my artistic practice with graffiti, even if I use the same medium. 

Germes Gang started as a graffiti crew but, nowadays, I don’t know how to define it. We do this… and that.

Sure. I really like this particular project and I’m actually curating one of the next editions that will be taking place at Balcony Gallery in Lisbon. But I don’t see accessibility as being a consumerist move; I find it quite relevant for the public in general to have the opportunity to buy pieces from artists they love. I as a buyer included.

As I mentioned, there is a real difference between the two practices – my art isn’t an upgrade of my practice as a graffiti artist. Using spray paint at quite a distance allows me to have less control, to create unintentional mistakes and somehow surprise myself. The technique in itself induces error – it’s a way of getting loose. This can happen in an abstract painting, where I don’t have any preconceived idea of how it is going to look like. Not having full control on the technique opens the space up to a new approach, compared with the initial sketches.

I guess it doesn’t. You can compare graffiti laws in Portugal to the rest of the world, but foreign graffiti writers still book flights to Portugal knowing they’re going to a small paradise.

Thank you. I’m really happy with that drawing. Being controversial always initiates conversations and is always going to get both good and bad feedback.

I don’t think so. As an artist, I feel super happy to have the freedom of showing whatever I want. And the bad feedback says much more about the people that give it than about me.

Vegeta.

I’ve had two solo exhibitions, one at Eduardo Secci Gallery in Firenze, and another one at Hawaii Lisbon Gallery. I’m about to release a new book with Germes Gang, and am curating another book for the Portuguese publisher Stolen Books. I’m also curating a Got It for Cheap exhibition at Balcony Gallery in Lisbon as I mentioned before. But for 2019, there is a new Women’s Day approaching…