Pedro Cabrita Reis

Pedro Cabrita Reis is a Portuguese artist most known for large scale sculptures and installations. His works are thought to be statements about housing, migrations, memory, and space. He uses objects from buildings to represent the meaning of a house to being human. To him, the house is a symbol of humanity’s ability to shape its own reality. His installment entitled serene disturbance uses fragments of life: beds, sinks, appliances, and the like. All are compacted into a maze-like structure. The silence and lifelessness of the work elicit the feeling of existential hopelessness that plagues the human condition. Pedro Cabrita Reis uses a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, and installations using both found objects like doors, window frames, and other recycled building materials. He uses worn down pieces of houses to represent lives that belong to the past, but remain a part of the collective memory. Fragmented materials represent the fragmentation of the contemporary human spirit. His art deals more with atmosphere and abstract emotions than concrete ideas or images of reality. He doesn’t place himself in a particular artistic tradition. Pedro Cabrita Reis works with precision to promote philosophic discourse. He chooses materials based on the ethics moods or politics he feels they have. Memory is an important theme in his work because in his words, “We see what we once were and what we will become.”