Due to the pandemic and travel restrictions, 6 of the 10 artists of the exhibition disCONNECT weren't able to come to London to create and install their artworks in the house. So we had to be imaginative in how we brought the house to them. In Vhils' case we uninstalled the doors of the library and shipped it to his studio. He then applied his bas-relief carving technique to transform the house’s library doors, during lockdown in his Lisbon studio. Once he was finished, they shipped and we reinstalled the doors in London...
"The set of portraits carved directly onto the old library doors are very simple pieces that play with the house's material and immaterial heritage, its fabric and texture, its history, making symbolically visible that which lies beneath the surface of things, inviting viewers to reflect on the intimate relationship between people and the places they live in. Each of these artworks depicts an anonymous person, someone all of us can identify with, representative of the way in which we interact with the forces shaping our contemporary world.” – Alexandre Farto aka Vhils
