Vhils Revisits His Monumental 'Visceral' Work at Caniçada Dam
A newly shared video returns to Vhils's monumental 2018 intervention at Portugal's Caniçada Dam, where workers, children, and landscape unfold across co...
By Weston Deboer
October 10, 2026 · 2 min read
Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, known as Vhils, has shared a new video revisiting Visceral, his monumental 2018 intervention at the Caniçada Dam in northern Portugal. Spread across the concrete face of hydroelectric infrastructure on the Cávado River, the work turns a utility structure into a layered portrait of labor, memory, and place.
A Monument to the People Who Built the Dam
The central face was inspired by the workers who helped construct the dam. Around it, children and tree forms connect one generation to the next, shifting the structure from an anonymous feat of engineering into a record of the people and communities attached to it.
Created through EDP's Art Route at Dams program, Visceral reflects on the rural exodus that has reshaped the region and on the resilience of communities around Terras de Bouro and Vieira do Minho. The piece brings built heritage and the surrounding mountain landscape into the same visual field.
Concrete, Community, and Time
Vhils made the composition directly on the dam wall at an architectural scale, using the concrete as both support and subject. His practice often treats surfaces as archives: removing, masking, or exposing layers so that human faces seem to be held inside the material itself.
In the video posted on October 1, 2026, the camera moves from the work's individual figures to the full sweep of the dam and reservoir. That change in scale is the heart of Visceral: personal memory embedded in an immense public structure, with weather and time continuing to alter how the image sits in the landscape.
Watch the full 32-second video in Vhils's post on X, and explore more work in the artist's official archive.
Sources: Vhils on X, Arrested Motion, and O Amarense. Project photographs credited to EDP, Pedro Santasmarinas, and João Almeida. Video still credited to Vhils; video by Hugo Oliveira.
