Visual artist Vitorious

My name is Vitor Machado Lira, aka Vitorious. I'm a visual artist and environmental activist from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. I grew up wanting to understand non-human animals as much as I wanted to know what I was meant to do with the challenge and privilege of being alive. Since 2008, I've received invaluable opportunities to study and work in the United States, where I earned a BA in Philosophy (Marist University, 2014), earned a MS in Environmental Justice (University of Michigan, 2016), and facilitated community engagement for sustainability projects in California (Circlepoint, 2018-22). Moved by the teachings of Wangarī Maathai and Thich Nhat Hanh, the Jaguar Parade (Brazil, 2022), and Banksy's first official stencil technique exhibit (Scotland, 2023), I felt a calling to return home and translate my experiences into purposeful art.

I seek to create artwork that directs attention, funding, and action to empower "stakeholders" whose voices are heard and comprehended the least (and, most often, not at all): the thousands of species that roam the lands that our (un)kind exploits. I use multiple media (from traditional drawing and stenciling to t-shirt prints, murals, and non-generative NFTs) to depict thoughtful non-human animals as messengers of allegories, metaphors, parables, common sayings, observations, insights, and paradoxes about our species. My ongoing projects include two carefully crafted NFT collections (without AI) that spotlight endangered species to raise funds for IUCN’s conservation research efforts and showcase a brigade of protesting wildlife to raise funds for Extinction Rebellion. 

To learn more about me and my projects, visit my website https://vitorious.shop/about.

All my social media sites and marketplace links are available on https://hopp.bio/vitorious.