Not Vital on travel as an engine for art

Born in 1948 in the village of Sent, in the Engadine valley, the life of Not Vital is inextricably linked to traveling. At first, the young artist left the Swiss Alps to study in Paris and Rome, then to move to New York, in 1974. In the dynamic art environment of the Big Apple, he soon became part of a diverse group of artists, a tribe that included Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring , Julian Schnabel and Grace Jones.

Not Vital’s work is multifaceted, oneiric and difficult to describe, as expressed through a multiplicity of media – from painting to drawing, from printing to sculpture. What all these expressions of his poetics share, is the intertwining of the ideas of travel and habitat, which makes his work rooted in the places he visits. His research, which revolves around the transformation of the family in an uncanny unfamiliar, has expanded in the 2000s, through the creation of buildings, where he relates programmatically with craftsmanship and local traditions. He leads a nomadic life, but he lives and works mainly between Beijing, Rio de Janeiro and Sent.

Shot in Alvaro Siza’s Faculty of Architecture at the University of Porto, this interview is part of the series resulting from the collaboration between Domus and Porto Academy. Since 2013, the summer school Porto Academy fuels the passion for architecture through an experience open to architects and students from all over the world. The 2018 edition took place from the 20th until the 27th of July, and makes no exception.