Explosive street art: Meet Vhils, Portugal’s ‘urban archaeologist’

“I say that I’m kind of an urban archaeologist because I basically carve on the walls of the city,” says Vhils, who is considered one of the world’s top urban artists. ADVERTISEMENT Alexandre Farto, aka Vhils, is considered one of the top urban artists in the world. Like many street artists, he started out painting illegal graffiti back when he was 13. But by the age of 16, the Portuguese artist was already questioning what he was doing and looking for his signature style. “I wanted to push what I was doing in the public space,” he says. “I sort of realised that all of us were adding layers on walls … they were accumulating the layers of changes. “I came up with the idea: instead of adding I would remove the layers of paint onto the walls.” So using hammers, chisels, knives and even explosives, Vhils began to etch and carve his art onto the walls of Lisbon. “I would go and break the wall, extracting and exposing the layers that were inside of the city in a way.” He also took his destructive style to advertisement billboards and other abandoned surfaces like doors and demolished buildings. “I would...