“It does not matter what stage of evolution humans are in; they always carry a frown, are never happy, and always wanna more.”

In 2007, Stefan Shimovitz and Miguel Macedo Basto de Carvalho had a production company that would support artists in producing new artworks. Unfortunately, their business fell apart a few years later, but at this time, it was great; they had incredible production possibilities in China. I decided to create large marble sculptures – the Humans. After going back and forth with their team, we designed the sculptures’ final form, including the bronze parts. Once we finished this process, they made clay mockups from the drawings. I flew to Lisbon and made the last changes. After that, those tiny humans were sent off to China to make them human-sized out of Carrara marble. And also to cast all the bronze parts. At that time, I had a solo show planned at the Migros Museum in Zuerich, Switzerland. The plan was for the brand-new sculptures to arrive a few days before the opening. I was thrilled to see six crates arriving in a truck one day before the show opened. That was great; only they sent twice the same sculpture! We decided to leave the double in its crate, which worked well since the show’s structure was built with shipping crates. It looked like a conceptual part of the show. A few days later, the missing sculpture arrived, and we exchanged them.

The Humans are an Edition of 3 made out of Carrara marble and cast bronze. After the Migros Museum, they went to Denmark for a group show at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg; after that, they floated over the Atlantic in a boat to New York City for a group exhibition at City Hall Park organized by the Public Art Fund. After that, they came to Upstate New York and sat in front of my studio. In 2023, they got sold to the city of Nantes, FR, and will stay there. 

2016, I produced a small clay version of The Humans called Small Humans.