Bicho Homem

Bicho Homem 

In my work I normally portray animals, often those we are not so used to living with and which we thus find more interesting.

Thinking about these animals often transports us to a purer, more natural place, a place in our imagination which instantly appears as a natural place for animals. If we apply this same perspective to the human race, what is the environment that is most natural to us, where humans exist in their purest form? Would it be that place where humankind has remained closest to nature and lives in greater harmony with it – as is still the case with some indigenous peoples? Or would it be that place which, contrary to our own nature and that of the planet, inhabits the artificial reality we have built for ourselves and by which we have become enslaved?

When we look at modern cities, the reality is much more complex. Alienated from nature, it often boils down to a duality between the haves and have-nots: those who have work, a house, access to education, access to health, money, stability and the possibility to imagine a future and realise it; and those who have nothing, whose  existence is shaped by the absence of possibility, who don’t have the means tochoose what they want to be and how they want to live. The latter have no choice but to survive.

This daily struggle makes the city not a place of development, progress and well-being, but a hostile place of oppression and violence.

Far removed from nature, the most fragile are disowned by their own species, consigned to a sub-existence, and likened to pests. These are the HUMAN ANIMALS.