Gang do Cobre [Copper Gang] is a long-term project started in 2013. Triggered by a graffiti on the then vacant Casa de Chá da Boa Nova, one of the most iconic projects by Portuguese architect Álvaro Joaquim de Melo Siza Vieira. Being a fact that the Tea House was vacant after being stripped clean of all its copper by criminals, the Copper Gang emerges as a fictional character, the main suspect in this fictional / metaphoric crime, embodied by the figure of Joaquim de Melo, who personifies cultural and architectural heritage.

The Copper Gang is a kind of heteronym that takes its name from its homonym (and real) criminal association. Its own person, it works issues that affect the underclasses; it addresses contemporary social, economic and political issues in a anti-system perspective, producing political interventions in a language close to that of urban art and using copper as a medium. The Copper Gang also focuses on issues concerning our built and cultural heritage, the flip side of this anti-system stance and disregard for heritage, which the real Copper Gang has been destroying all over the country.

The name suggests an existence between reality and fiction, between art and crime. For these reasons, the Copper Gang builds stories and visual narratives that exist somewhere between document and fiction, in a recurring metaphorical provocation.

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