Alexandre da Cunha was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1969. He studied in Brazil before moving to London to continue his education in the arts. Exhibiting widely since graduating, Da Cunha's sculptures and large-scale installations centre on the approach of reusing and recycling everyday materials, including found objects from the streets, while often addressing issues around national identity. He has executed several public commissions, including a large-scale installation in 2021 for <em>Art on the Underground, </em>Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset</em>, a permanent kinetic sculpture at Battersea Power Station Underground station, whose elements span 100m and 60m.
Artist Alexandre da Cunha was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1969. He first enrolled at the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado in Brazil. In the late 1990s, he immigrated to London to study sculpture at the Royal College of Art, before continuing his training at Chelsea College of Arts (UAL).
Da Cunha’s practice encompasses sculptures, wall-mounted works and large-scale outdoor sculptural commissions made from found objects collected from the streets, combined with new materials. His work blends mass-produced and traditional sculptural techniques, recycling and recontextualising discarded items—many of which have lost their monetary value and are considered to be rubbish. The ready-made, therefore, serves as the foundation of his practice, employed to explore the relationship between narrative, history, and labour. The everyday mundane objects include quotidian items such as mops, walking sticks, food packaging, shovel handles, ping pong bats, hammers, cake tins, golf balls, and glass bottles, sunk into cast concrete. He describes his approach as ‘pointing’—a method of identifying discarded objects and uncovering their new possibilities. For example, in his Ikebanas, titled after the traditional Japanese art of floral arrangement, flowers are unexpectedly crafted form bottle brushes, broom fragments, glass bottles, and drain components. Da Cunha also frequently engages with modernist architecture, incorporating concrete to reflect both the ideals and aesthetics of modernism, while simultaneously revealing unexpected romantic and lyrical sensibilities. His influences and artistic affiliations range from classical sculpture and Baroque patterns to Primitivism, Italian Arte Povera, Tropicália and Brazilian Modernism. He also draws inspiration from the Neo-Concrete Brazilian art movement of the late 1950s, Op Art, and the modernist architecture of major Brazilian cities. Additionally, themes of national identity frequently emerge in his work, often represented through the imagery of the flag. ‘My work’, he has stated in an interview, ‘is an invitation to the viewer to slow down and fight that anxiety of being in between the past and the future, […]. The materiality of the work functions as a reminder of the present time,’ (da Cunha quoted in Hur, 2024).
Da Cunha’s work is regularly shown in the UK and internationally, in both solo and group exhibitions. In 2018 he held a two person show with senior sculptor, Philip King, at the Royal Society of Sculptors. He has also participated in the Venice Biennale (2003) and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2022). Solo outings include a show at London's Camden Arts Centre (2009), while his 2021 solo exhibition in Brighton, Duplex, explored themes of consumption, reuse, materiality, and art history. The exhibition invited viewers to engage with recurring everyday motifs in a way that mirrors da Cunha’s own interaction with materials, while drawing upon the city’s past and its evolving cultural landscape to explore how objects, materials, and histories move through time and space. He has also executed a number of public commissions, including an installation for Art on the Underground in 2021. His piece Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset is a permanent kinetic sculpture located at Battersea Power Station Underground station. Spanning 100m and 60m, it features two rotating friezes inspired by the station’s old control room. Using an obsolete billboard mechanism, the panels display shifting colours based on London’s skies, evoking daily cycles, routine, and eternity. The artwork transforms the ticket hall into a dynamic, ever-changing space. Commercially, Da Cunha often exhibits with Thomas Dale Gallery in their London and Naples spaces. His London exhibition with the gallery, Broken (2013), built on the enduring exploration of found objects, while investigating themes of obsolescence, fragmentation, and decay, reframing them as catalysts for artistic creation and transformation.
Alexandre da Cunha lives and works between London and São Paulo, Brazil. Regarding the experience of living between two locations and its influence on his work, he remarked: ‘At this point, I might be ready to be more settled in one place but I feel that my work is constantly pushing me not to stop, not to accept, not to commit to a specific place or culture. It can be quite disorientating at times. I often feel that I don’t belong anywhere, but I do think the work grows as it travels and the flux of ideas and things in general inform the work in a positive way’, (da Cunha quoted in Hur, 2024). His works are held in several UK public collections, including the Arts Council Collection, Government Art Collection, The Hepworth Wakefield, and Tate.