Carlos Bunga

Carlos Bunga: the artist

Carlos Bunga (Porto, Portugal, 1976; lives and works in Barcelona) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work investigates the underlying hierarchical and authoritarian dynamics embedded in the spaces and environments we inhabit.

Originally trained as a painter, Bunga has expanded his practice beyond the traditional boundaries of the medium. His paintings often transcend the confines of the canvas, spilling onto the surrounding surfaces and merging with sculpture.

In doing so, Bunga continuously redefines spatial boundaries, activating processes of spatial re-semantization. Painting, sculpture, and performance are not endpoints in his practice but rather moments within a broader inquiry rooted in a critical reflection on architecture as an expression of power. Through the deconstruction of urban and domestic environments—and the cultural memories they carry—Bunga challenges their assumed permanence, revealing their inherent transience and temporal fragility.

His ongoing processes of construction and transformation bring forth layered and urgent issues, including migration, demography, and socio-economic disparity. These dynamics are not merely suggested but enacted, generating a subversive energy aimed at transforming our understanding of the past by probing the present. The pervasive sense of precarity in Bunga’s work is heightened by the careful, delicate use of humble, everyday materials—such as the cardboard or textile—which become structural, poetic, and politically charged elements within his installations.

The exhibition by Carlos Bunga at Pirelli HangarBicocca

Through a refined use of color and materiality, Bunga’s immersive environments disorient the viewer, destabilizing perception and encouraging a questioning of the reality that surrounds them. For his first solo exhibition in Italy, Bunga will radically transform the architectural setting of the Shed at Pirelli HangarBicocca.

Not only will he redefine the spatial boundaries of the place, but he will also transfigure its volumes. Painterly sculptures, drawings, and color-saturated surfaces will merge into a performative landscape, in which the viewer will be deeply implicated—invited to question the neutrality of space and of the architectural discipline itself.