Rumbling Within, 2024

Through a delicate interplay of form and material, the works in this show invite viewers to contemplate the intrinsic connections between the development and decay of human society, drawing subtle parallels between the materiality and function of modern technologies, the exploitation of mineral resources, and the degradation of our planet’s ecosystems.

Exhibition views

Felipe de Ávila Franco's work has been already displayed in various solo and group exhibitions in Europe, United States, South America and Asia at distinguished galleries and museums such as the Helsinki Art Museum HAM, and the Im Kornerpark Gallery, in Berlin, besides the Museum of Brazilian Art FAAP, in São Paulo, and the Contemporary Art Museum KIASMA, in Helsinki, in which his work integrates the collections.

Subjective Substance 2023

The exhibition navigates the conceptual subjectivity of notions of energy as a pivotal element for speculating on energy as a substance that not only inhabits but also connects the realms of reality, fiction, and spiritual.

The Trillionth Tonne, 2022

The invisible shadow of an unearthed rock hovers upon our times. It is predicted that one trillion tonnes of anthropogenic carbon emissions can be allocated into the atmosphere by 2040, and if exceeded that limit reversing climate change and its devastating effects might be impossible.

How to Postpone the End, 2021

The exhibition casts an encounter among modern and rudimentary technologies through a clash between scientific perspectives and a more ancient and grounded cosmovision.

Displacements, 2021

The work consists of four transparent travel suitcases with hundreds of heart-shaped ceramic objects resting inside. The hearts are made of terracotta and porcelain combined with contaminated soil material collected from different sites of Finland and Brazil where mining industry activities has been reported as responsible for environmental contamination. The work addresses a difficult aspect of the current social-environmental crisis: the contamination of land and water and how it deeply affects human populations. The work invites to reflections on how the geographically distant dystopias deeply affect our immediate reality in both material and immaterial levels, regardless of where we are. 

Polluted Polygons, 2021

Through thorough experimentation, a unique series of prints has emerged, born from the fusion of recycled engine lubricant oil and assorted petrochemical waste.

Futures in Display, 2019-21

Prosaic objects become signs of history, which have to be deciphered. So the poet becomes not only a naturalist or an archaeologist, excavating the fossils and unpacking their poetic potential, he also becomes a kind of symptomatologist, delving into the dark underside or the unconscious of a society to decipher the messages engraved in the very flesh of ordinary things. (The Aesthetic Revolution and its Outcomes - Jacques Ranciere)

Future Fossils, 2020-21

Future archaeology will come across varied kinds of objects and remains, damned and contaminated with the memory of the times when the present was turning into a predictable dystopian stratum of the future.

Re-Actions, 2019

Once incorporated and transformed by the action of the elements, climate, and time, these materials and structures are now transfigured from simple objects into artifacts that, beyond mere debris and remains, "portray and manifest the consummated revolt of nature".

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Favela Offshore, 2019-21

A visual clash the two antagonic architectonical structures shed light on the contradictions carried by the industrial society’s large scale exploitation systems.

Eclipse, 2017-20

Fossil fuel is a source of power that creates ambiguity and perplexity. It enabled human society to achieve beyond the imaginable, at the same time becoming the shortest way to a rough and dystopian future.

Provoked Archaeologies #2, 2019

The act of excavating, investigating in order to reveal, protect and preserve what unites present and past, supplying history with evidence, exposes the dichotomy of an invasive action.

The Last Man on Earth, 2019

The work is inspired by the book Last and First Men, a scientific novel written in 1930 by the British writer Olaf Stapledon, and describes the Earth in a future two billion years ahead of us.

Tropical Delusion, 2018

The photograph series portrays the ruins left by the biggest environmental disaster ever registered in the history of Brazil, and questions the idea of 'nature as something separated from human society'.

Dismantles, 2018

The work refers to the behavior of the mud during the largest environmental disaster in Brazilian history when it reached the waters of the Doce River, creating a curtain that extended all the way to the riverbed.

Melting Darks, 2018

The work is part of a series of investigations regarding the relations between the motion of non-solid substances and notions of perception of time and space. The piece materializes the paradox of the movement and behaviour of 'energy' as a material and a substance, a difficult concept to discuss ontologically, being energy something diluted between the realms of science and spirituality. Both materials involved in the construction of this piece - the dark oil and the bright light - configure materialities that are central in the perpetration of the industrial society as a technological machinery and a gigantic extension of ourselves; expanding through space and whose effect can last in time, exceed life, generations, and even the human species itself.

Dissipate, 2018

In physics, dissipation encompasses the concept of a dynamic system where important mechanical models, such as waves or oscillations, lose energy over time. The lost energy is converted into heat, raising the temperature of the system.

Depletions, 2017

A ceramic series was produced by incorporating the contaminated soil from the largest environmental disaster in Brazilian history, when in November 2015 an iron ore tailings dam suffered a catastrophic failure, leaking 60 million cubic meters of ore tailings into nature, destroying 700 Km of river waters before it reaches the Atlantic Ocean 17 days later.

Provoked Archaeologies #1, 2017

The performance consisted of pouring petroleum to complete the sculpture 'All Well' and graffiti stamping the words 'Post Truth' with black spray paint for the piece 'White Flags'. The action led to the installation Provoked Archaeologies #1 connecting both works in an attempt of materializing the intrinsic connection between ideology, discourse and environmental exploitation.

Plagues, 2017

The Earth is hidden under layers of concrete. It has become so prevalent in construction that more than half of all the concrete ever used was produced in the past 20 years. Humans have produced enough concrete to thinly pave the entire surface of the Earth. The concrete blocks relate to the industrialized society’s exponential growth, which demands more supplies, more production, and therefore, increasing exploitation of the resources and land that once was home to indigenous populations.

Wall Flow, 2017

The use of fossil fuels has intoxicated human imagination and warped human knowledge, how they have accelerated time and constituted illusions of distance and separateness not just in popular or political culture but in philosophy as well. (Energy and Experience: An Essay in Nafthology, By Antti Salminen & Tere Vadén)

Deconstruction, 2017

Deconstruction by its very nature defies institutionalization in an authoritative definition. It is a name commonly associated with the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s critical outlook on the relationship between language and the construction of meaning.

Ode to Anthropocene, 2016

Solids have clear spatial dimensions while fluids do not possess any specific form and cannot hold their shape. Solids cancel time while for the fluid, by contrast, it is the flow of time that matters, not the space they happen to occupy, once they take this space only 'for a moment'.

Land, Lake and Landscape, 2017

Everything is eroded and corroded by the action of time, the same thing that heals and renews, in a continuous process of balance and improvement. It is a non-linear, delicate, time-consuming, and varied process, with so many complexities and confrontations to be considered that it often seems to be out of control.