Born on Madeira Island, Portugal, and living in California since the early 1990’s, Rigo 23 is known for his global artistic practice centered on international solidarity, anticapitalist critique and the creation of networks of affinity – often with marginalized communities, individuals, and perspectives.
Stemming from collaborative practices and the strategies of cultural resistance deeply rooted in the communities with which he works, Rigo 23’s art manifests an expanded concept of kinship, a lived and deeply felt mutuality of being. One which is built through the sharing of experiences, spaces, affections and commitments.
His artworks often result from relationships that extend over long periods of time and which are established through reciprocal actions, such as shared living, shared remembering, shared creating, and shared struggling.
His works of art are best understood as devices of care and alliance, where the creation of the physical work of art is inseparable from the construction and sustenance of networks of solidarity and belonging.
During the three decades he was based in the Bay Area, Rigo sustained relationships with members of the Chicano Movement, the Black Panther Party and its offspring, AIM and the Indigenous Sovereignty Movement, the LGBTQ community, the Environmental Movement, Bicyclists, Punks, Graffiti writers, youth and Political Prisoners.
He often creates works which live directly in public space, unmediated, such as InnerCity-Home (1994) One Tree (1995); Sky/Ground (1998); Truth (2002); Victory Stand (2005); The Great Migration of the Monarch Butterflies (2014); Ripples Become Waves (2018) and A Noble Cause (2022) in the Bay Area.
He continues to organize embodied cultural exchanges between communities, and individuals in the spirit of Inter-communalism. Brazil, South Africa, India, the USA, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Aotearoa, China, Portugal, Indonesia and Chile all intersect in his practice.
Rigo also keeps a studio and temporary exhibition practice.
