MADEONEARTH
Faux Favela
The first thing you’re likely to notice about
Benjamin Van Oost’s Favela is that it’s made
entirely of trash — recycled boxes, pieces of metal
found on the street, toilet paper rolls, aluminum
cans. And at a little over 1 meter in height, the
sculpture appears as burgeoning and claustrophobic as the real thing.
Favela is a Portuguese word most commonly
translated in Brazil as “shantytown.” Built from
materials ranging from bricks to garbage, favelas are
plagued by sewage, crime, and hygiene problems.
In most cases electricity is illegally tapped from the
public grid. As a general rule, Brazilian cities do not
recognize favelas as legal entities.
Dutch artist Van Oost began to conceive of Favela
in 2007, with his girlfriend Annelies, after seeing the
Brazilian film Cidade de Deus (City of God).
“The movie certainly inspired us in a way, but
to be honest, we started building the Favela just
because we felt the need to create something out
of nothing,” Van Oost says. “We didn’t make any
sketches before we started building and we didn’t
know what the result would be.”
And it was only after seeing the work of Congolese
artist Bodys Isek Kingelez — “his maquettes, his
utopian, modernistic architecture” — that the actual
building process began. “The Favela originated in a
creative ‘rush’ where we didn’t really know where it
was going,” Van Oost remembers.
Van Oost, along with collaborator Mathieu Van
Damme, founded Toykyo Productions, a design
agency and production company, in 2007. Their
projects include a cardboard backdrop used in a
campaign for sleeping pills, decor for fashion shoots,
and life-sized statues in polyester. They also design
T-shirts and do limited screen prints and graffiti.
Favela hasn’t yet been publicly displayed, but it
has a place of prominence in Van Oost’s home in
Belgium and is featured on his company website.
“Everyone can have their own interpretation of the
work, can create their own story within this micro-world,” he enthuses. —Thomas Walker Wilson
>> More Toykyo Work: toykyo.be
Photograph by Benjamin Van Oost
22 Make: Volume 19
