Humanimals | Noe Klabin

What lies beneath our ‘social mask’?

Disembodied doll parts and dead angels – meet the Brazilian artist quelling his demons with art

Artist Noé Klabin's work is fucked up – and I'm sure he won't mind me saying that. The Brazilian-born talent is hell bent on unveiling the savage nature of the human body by peering behind the social masks we wear, and exploring his dark side through art – sculptures of reconstructed baby dolls, animals, and surreal paintings. Last year, the Brazilian native grabbed headlines when he staged Amor, a controversial public installation where a winged body lay still, covered in a white sheet and blood in the middle of a shopping centre in Rio. This weekend, he's hopped across the pond to unveil his hauntingly beautiful debut solo show at the Hoxton Gallery, who are playing host to Eat Your Art Out Weekender.  

Titled Humanimals, Klabin explains: "It's about unveiling what's under the social mask. It's about getting in touch with the savage, the wild, the animal inside us – and the conflict we have between being social creatures and an animal at the same time. Sometimes it talks about the aggressive emotions I feel, that I have to hold in – such as the instinct to kill. Other works draw on other social issues – repression of sexual desire for example. We have this rule in society that we have to behave in a certain way towards sex and the way we dress.” Drawn to plastic in particular, the artist's favourite thing to meld, melt and disfigure are baby dolls. Leading us to a seriously macabre twist in his art, he explains: “They are like ready made sculptures to work with. You can cut off their hands, their legs, and their heads, and then you can create a new little creature.”Noé Klabin's work is on show this weekend at Eat Your Art Out Weekender. Co-hosted by actress Jaime Winstone at London's Hoxton gallery, the weekend includes live music alongside the opening of Klabin's workWords: Dazed Digitalhttps://vimeo.com/51140807