Andre Fila

Lives and works in Coventry, UK

Artist statement

I am a Brazilian-born artist based in the United Kingdom, and my visual language has developed through painting, graffiti, drawing and tattoo culture. I combine figurative realism with fragmented compositions, spray-painted gestures, bold colour and simplified graphic forms. My current series, Chaos and Dignity, explores the contradictions that shape contemporary life: vulnerability and strength, belonging and exclusion, individuality and conformity, violence and peace. The figures in my paintings often exist between different visual worlds. Realistic faces are interrupted by graffiti, graphic characters and broken surfaces, reflecting the tension between lived identity and the identities imposed by culture, institutions and social expectations. My Brazilian roots remain central to this practice. I grew up surrounded by strong visual contrasts: beauty and inequality, humour and struggle, colour and disorder. Those contradictions continue to influence the way I think about dignity and resilience. Rather than offering fixed answers, I use painting to create spaces where different realities can exist at once. My work asks how much of who we are is chosen, how much is inherited, and how much is constructed by the world around us.

Artwork