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Filipe Vilas-Boas cultivates a practice situated at the confluence of digital art, installation, and performance. His protean inquiries, oscillating between poetic gesture and conceptual stimuli, scrutinize our technological modalities and their subsequent ethical, social, and aesthetic implications.
Our collaboration originated in dialogue—a convergence of probabilities and artistic openings that harmonized with our vision of the OVNi Biennial as a contemporary agora.
It thus appeared self-evident to place the RE:PUBLIC project at the heart of this 2026 edition. A monumental hemispherical sculpture conceived as a public square, the work mirrors the very essence of our existence: it invites a collective quest for equilibrium by reenacting our cultural and political bonds—a shared state that encompasses the social body in its entirety.
Born in Portugal in 1981, Filipe Vilas-Boas currently lives and works in Ivry-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris. As a conceptual artist, his practice interrogates the porosity and mutual yearning between digital and physical public spheres, both of which are permeated by a profound political and spiritual consciousness. He perpetually reinvents his artistic vocabulary through apparatuses that weave together Artificial Intelligence, robotics, and low-tech (DIY) methodologies. With a blend of wit and critical rigor, he deconstructs the imaginaries of the digital age. His often interactive projects seek to materialize the invisible mechanics of the attention economy, data-mining, and automation.
His oeuvre probes the ubiquity of technology in everyday life and its far-reaching influence on our cognitive and social behaviors. Several works address the utopias of interconnection, subverting the symbols and rituals of digital culture to unveil the underlying mechanisms of either adherence or addiction. For Vilas-Boas, the central challenge lies not in the technology itself, but in the power dynamics, the mythologies, and the forms of dependency it engenders within contemporary societies.
Filipe Vilas-Boas works through a collaborative lens, merging the expertise of makers, engineers, designers, musicians, gamers, educators, and researchers. Notably, he is the founder of The Fairy, a studio for cultural and technological innovation based in Portugal and France. He is a frequent speaker and consultant on the ethical and societal implications of AI.
Selected Exhibitions
His work has been showcased in numerous international events and prestigious institutions. These include the FIT Freie Internationale Tankstelle in Berlin, Nuit Blanche in Paris (Saint-Eustache), and the traveling Musée Passager project. He was featured in Portuguese Emerging Art (2018 and 2019). His projects have also been presented at the Siana Biennial, the Némo Biennial at CENTQUATRE-Paris, the Grenier à Sel (Avignon), the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration, the Musée des Arts et Métiers, UNESCO, the MAAT Museum in Lisbon, Teatros del Canal in Madrid, ADAF in Athens, Share Festival in Turin, CCBB in Belo Horizonte (Brazil), and Tate Modern in London.
Site de l’artiste : www.filipevilasboas.com