Art: Bordalo II.
Photo: Pat Greenhouse/Boston Globe.
I’ve been following this Portuguese sculptor on Instagram for several years. Now he’s worked with high school students to create a sculpture for Portuguese-speaking New Bedford, Mass., not too far from where I live.
I have been curious about this artist, age 36, for a long time. He makes vibrant sculptures from trash and shows them on Instagram.
Cate McQuaid wrote recently at the Boston Globe about Bordalo II’s “Plastic Rooster.”
“There’s a new rooster in town,” she says, “and he’s close to 20 feet tall and kind of trashy. Portuguese artist Bordalo II’s ‘Plastic Rooster’ sits beside the New Bedford YMCA, the centerpiece of Massachusetts Design Art and Technology Institute’s (DATMA) ‘TRANSFORM: Reduce, Revive, Reimagine’ public-art initiative through Oct. 14. …
“Bordalo has traveled the world, from Bora Bora to Montreal, painting and building gaudy, charismatic animal sculptures out of waste materials. He was in town in mid-June putting finishing touches on ‘Plastic Rooster.’ The giant bird is clad in nautical refuse, plastic, street signs, and more collected by locals. He wears a plastic penguin under his beak like a bowtie, and his talons are cut from bright-pink safety cones. …
“[He says] ‘My grandfather, he was an artist. I was really young and I always tried to dig into his studio and steal his paints and draw stuff.’
“The artist, whose first name is Artur, calls himself ‘Bordalo II’ as a tribute to his grandfather, Real Bordalo. At 11, the younger Bordalo became a graffiti artist.
“ ‘It shaped the person I am, the way we do everything,’ he said. “Not being afraid to risk, to really do it. The scale. The sense of how it connects with the street.’ …
“The artist’s lighthearted characters carry messages about over-consumption and conservation. ‘With the big trash animals, it’s like you make portraits of the victims with what destroys them or their habitats,’ he said. …
“ ‘Plastic Rooster’ was commissioned by DATMA, which has partnered with local landfill management departments and the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School to involve the community.
“Bordalo sent his rooster image to the school’s 11th-grade Metal Fabrication students, who built the structure from steel and wood.
“ ‘After that we have a list of plastic trash materials that we know we’re going to need, and we ask the local production team to collect all those materials,’ Bordalo said. ‘My team starts to cover it, to make the first skin. I join them in the middle of the process, and I make more skin, more volumes, all the details. I make the head, the eyes, the nose.’ …
“Public art and programming presented around New Bedford by Massachusetts Design Art and Technology Institute through Oct. 14, www.datma.org/transform.”
I am adding more fromWikipedia, as I felt I had more questions.
“He studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at University of Lisbon in Lisbon for eight years, but never finished the course, instead experimenting with ceramics, sculpture, and other materials. …
“His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions and mounted in streets across the world, including Singapore, the United States, French Polynesia, and Europe. In the 10 years between 2012 and 2022, he used over 60 (or 115, by another estimate) tons of waste materials to create around 200 sculptures of animals.
“Bordalo’s work is focused on the themes of ecology, waste, and recycling, and makes use of garbage in his work as a method of critiquing over-consumption in the world. Using materials such as old tires, pieces of wrecked cars, discarded appliances, plastic waste, and aluminum cans, he challenges materialism and consumerism in the modern world. …
“Bordalo supports Portuguese refugee advocacy organization Humans Before Borders, which helps to fund five medical NGOs working in refugee camps on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Samos.
“A short documentary film entitled Bordalo II: A Life of Waste was released by the Irish Film Board in 2017.”
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