Rust Belt #07

GALERIA VERA CORTÊS presents “Rust Belt #7”, by Alexandre Farto aka Vhils. The project was executed in Barreiro, a city on the southern margin of the Tagus river which used to be part of a massive rust-belt area. This place holds a significance for the artist because it is where he was born and raised. The portrait created by the explosion is based on archive pictures of workers from the factory that once stood there and pays homage to them all, but is also a testament to the ephemerality of these enormous and complex industrial infrastructures. There are countless areas like this across the western world: cities that lost their livelihood and adapted to new and harsh realities. Alexandre Farto aka Vhils has symbolically crystallised this in a digital format as a digital industrial era approaches at full speed, in a timeframe and territory where our presence will be progressively less evident.