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Show RCA 2019

Hugo Lami

Show RCA work

Major project:

UPLOAD YOUR DREAMS

The installation titled 'UPLOAD YOUR DREAMS' is situated outside of the RCA building in Kensington, next to the Royal Albert Hall. One by one, visitors will go inside and meet the character that inhabits the shipping container. The viewer will find a space filled with suspended shelves displaying objects and artworks, lights that turn on and off misplace the viewer. A place in another realm between the real and the fictional, where failed experiments, altered and denied objects find a way of living with the character that impersonates a failed superhero that relied for his superpowers on technology and money from his company 'FUTUROON'.

The guest is presented with the opportunity to roll a colourful dice for the chance to win a luck crystal. This crystal will always give luck to its owner, so long as its recipient never forgets where it came from: otherwise its power wears off.

The artistic project, based on sculpture, painting and installation, explores a poetic anxiety related to the future of the human species. References to mythology and cliché sayings merge with artificial and natural forms. A subversion of the purpose of the objects establishes unusual interactions with cultural, environmental and economical systems. It is about the physical and cultural survival of one, in a world dominated by invisible systems that threaten the essence of freedom.

Installation Opening, Dates and Times:

27 June 6.30–9pm (Private View)

28-30 June 12.30–5.30pm

1-2 July 12.30–5.30pm

3 July (Inside closed) 

4-7 July 12.30-5.30pm

Location: RCA Kensington, Royal Albert Hall entrance, outside podium. 

SW7 2EU

Info

  • Hugo Lami (Coimbra, 1994) is a Portuguese artist whose project, based on sculpture, painting and installation, explores a poetic anxiety related to the future of the human species. Through an inherited melancholy of the past, references to mythological worlds merge with research into the contamination of both artificial and natural forms, hybridising life-like body parts with inanimate materials. A subversion of the purpose of the objects establishes unusual interactions with cultural, historical, environmental and economical systems. These connections are demonstrated as heterogeneous and conflictual systems within an unpredictable becoming in a dialectical relationship to the world.

    The line between the real and the fictional is continuously blurred. The articulation between the silicones, the resins, the plasters, the ceramics and the fortuitous encounters with objects that question our relation with the products we use, produce humorous narratives across the work. These narratives reveal hidden and unexpected relations between time and value. Myth, and clichéd sayings play an essential role in this process, and their stories provide the connections between materials and symbolism.

    Through the use of biotic, abiotic, mineral, vegetal, animal, and man-made, abstract entities and real inhabitants, a parallel world come to life. This fluidity embodies ideas of mutation, adaptation and hostility, that can be associated to economical processes. It is about the physical and cultural survival of one, in a world dominated by invisible systems that threaten the essence of the idea of freedom.

    The artificial nature of the cult is equivalent to the relationship we build with our technologies and social media. The corrupted utopia of the idyllic body (‘Mens sana in corpore sano’) is swallowed by technological advancement, Capitalism and consumption leading us to be hedonists.

    In the end, who doesn’t want to have fun?

  • Previous degrees

  • Guest Student, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany, 2016–17; BA Fine Arts, University of Lisbon, Portugal, 2016
  • Exhibitions

  • 'VIA Arts Prize', Brazilian Embassy, London, 2019; 'Digital Gods', Weltkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf, 2018; 'Work in Process', MUTE Art Gallery, Lisbon, 2018; 'Klangkörper', Antichambre, Düsseldorf, 2017; 'Viga', Quadrum Gallery, Lisbon, 2017; Digital Display: 'What is the Future of Art?', Tate Modern, London, 2016; 'A Day', Gallery Graça Brandão, Lisbon, 2016; 'Contemporary Crisis', Bunkerkirche, Düsseldorf, 2016; 'Shadows of an Essence', UNL, Monte da Caparica, 2015
  • Awards

  • People's Choice Award, 'VIA Arts Prize', Brazilian Embassy, 2019; Dissertation Distinction, Royal College of Art, 2019; WAOH RCA, Bursary for Wandsworth Council Open House, 2018
  • Funding

  • Continuation Fund, Royal College of Art
  • Sponsors

  • FORSOLID Manufactury S.L; Tecnodeck Grupo Mitera Portugal; Spain Plexiglas Mineral; FORMATO ASTUTO LDA; Institute Camões from Portugal
Royal College of Art