About
Alexandre Farto (Vhils) is a Portuguese street artist internationally recognized for his distinctive technique of carving portraits directly into urban surfaces. Using tools such as drills, chisels, and jackhammers, he removes layers of walls to reveal embedded textures, effectively transforming decaying or overlooked urban environments into large-scale sculptural works.
Rather than adding paint to a surface, his practice is defined by subtraction—removing material to expose the hidden history of a place. The resulting works often depict anonymous individuals as well as cultural figures, emphasizing themes of identity, memory, and urban transformation.
While street art is typically considered ephemeral, Vhils’ practice pushes this transience even further. Many of his works are created on abandoned buildings, demolition sites, or temporary exhibition walls, meaning that a significant portion of his output has already disappeared due to urban change, redevelopment, or intentional removal.
This catalog reconstruction is partially based on documented photographic archives and editorial coverage of his works.
Practice & Context
Vhils emerged from the Lisbon graffiti scene and has since developed a globally recognized practice that spans street interventions, gallery installations, and large-scale public commissions.
Key themes in his work include:
- Urban memory and erasure
- Identity within rapidly changing cities
- The tension between destruction and creation
- The layered history of built environments
Notable Locations (Documented Works)
His works have been documented across multiple cities, including:
- Lisbon (Portugal)
- London (United Kingdom)
- Sydney (Australia)
- Mexico City (Mexico)
- Hong Kong (China)
- Moscow (Russia)
- Johannesburg (South Africa)
- Bucharest (Romania)
- Cape Verde (Santiago & São Vicente)
Sources
Primary visual and descriptive reference material used in reconstructing this dataset includes:
CBS News - Street Artist Vhils Gallery
This CBS News photographic feature provided key documentation of Vhils’ works across multiple cities, including contextual descriptions and location references used to reconstruct parts of this catalog.
Special acknowledgment to CBS News for the archival visual documentation that made this reconstruction possible.
Vhils on Reddit
In 2022 Vhils did a AMA (ask me anything) on reddit. The post can still be found here.
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