Alvaro has been a designer and visual artist for over 20 years, building a solid experience as a graphic designer, videographer, events photographer, and web designer for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and private clients, in Brazil and Canada. The artist has participated in group exhibitions with Art Souterrain, Dare-Dare Art Center and the Fantasia Festival. He also collaborated with Tohu, Éditions du Noroit and several research projects at UQÀM.(Médiane, Labard, Écolab). Lately, as a designer, he has been creating educative content for Sherpa Institute and CERDA, both research structures of the CIUSSS de l'Ouest-de-l'Île-de-Montréal (Montreal's West-Island Integrated Univesitary Center of Health and Social Services), which can be visited here: Alvaro designer.
Since 2021, Alvaro has been forging a new creative direction in the visual arts, producing artworks that appropriate and transform pre-existing images through the tools and aesthetics of graphic design—a process that culminated in a Master of Arts degree he obtained in 2023, at UQÀM. His creations draw on the Pop Art tradition and employ techniques associated with industrial image production. In 2024, he was admitted to the Arts Faculty’s Ph.D. program at UQAM, where he conducts a participatory field study on deconstructing colonial symbols—such as national flags—and reconstructing them as new visual compositions. His research aims to question national belonging affects, and prejudices through a collaborative approach grounded in relationality and reciprocity approaches. He also collaborates with the Montreal-based Fondation Laurent-Duvernay-Tardif, where he serves as an art mentor in the 6e période program, offering art-making opportunities to children and adolescents in underprivileged communities.
Two major solo exhibitions in 2025, at the Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges and at Optica – Contemporary Art Center, are important recognitions of the artist’s relevance in the contemporary local scene. He has also been granted a two-year scholarship from UQAM Fondation and the ARPRIM Print Art Production fund in 2023.
In his creations, Alvaro adopts a critical stance on the printed image through the hybridization of screen printing, stamping and stencil techniques by creating unique images made from the same matrices. The artist embodies voluntary disobedience on technical gestures, which cause blunders and intentional errors, as well as other forms of subversion of the precept of the perfectly realized image.
Artist's selected artwork can be purchased thought the Atelier Circulaire website