Hugo Lami Portugal, b. 1994

Hugo Lami (b.1994, Coimbra) focuses his work on the digital and virtual absurdity of contemporary culture, evoking our social dependency on technological devices and social media. His paintings portray environments of 3D construction software, with the purpose of re-embodying virtual tools. His sculptures and installations investigate the hardware of our technological evolution. The works create innovative narratives of possible Utopian and Dystopian futures that could quite easily become a reality.

I research the impact of technology in our society, firstly to keep myself attached to reality, but with the purpose of hopefully reminding people that the devices we use are tools and that they must be used by us... I see painting as an expansion of a mind while sculpture expands as a physical body into our world. Reality has become more digital, and what was once seen as the virtual, starts to merge with our physical world validated by the dominance of technology in our lives.

Hugo Lami has a Masters in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art and a Degree in Painting from the Lisbon Fine Arts Academy. Lami has been exhibiting in galleries and institutional spaces across Europe since 2014. He was awarded the Public’s Choice Award at VIA Arts Prize, London, 2019, and made his first public sculpture in 2018 in Ermioni, Greece. In 2020 he was an Artist in Residence at the Muse at 269 in London and worked on a commission for the organisation Sustainability First.