Bordalo II is the working name of Artur Bordalo, a Portuguese street artist and sculptor known for building large animal figures from discarded wood, plastic, metal, rubber, and other urban waste. His work turns rubbish into public sculpture, usually on a monumental scale and often mounted on walls or installed in open city spaces. The name points to his family line as well as his practice: he inherited the “Bordalo” surname from a maker’s tradition and added the Roman numeral II to mark himself as a second generation.

Known for giant animal sculptures made from salvaged waste and scrap materials.
Uses refuse from streets, construction sites, and industrial sites as both material and subject.
Works often show endangered or threatened animals to link consumption and environmental damage.
Combines street art, assemblage, and sculpture in public settings.
His pieces depend on colour sorting, layering, and fastening rather than carving or casting.

How did Bordalo II start making these animals?

Bordalo II emerged from Lisbon’s street art scene, where spray painting, collage, and urban intervention already treated the city as a working surface. He moved from flat graffiti to relief and sculptural work by gathering discarded materials and composing them into animal forms. The shift matters because it changed waste from background matter into the main substance of the artwork. Instead of painting an image of an animal, he builds one from the very debris that helps destroy its habitat.

His method is practical and site-aware. He sorts material by colour and texture, then bolts, wires, and layers it into an armature so the parts read at a distance as a coherent figure and up close as a mass of found objects. The result sits between mural and sculpture: it clings to walls, projects into space, and often occupies corners, facades, or derelict sites that already carry signs of neglect.

What materials does he use?

The core material is waste, but not waste in a vague sense. Bordalo II works with broken plastics, tyres, metal pieces, pipes, wood offcuts, fishing gear, packaging, and other debris collected from urban circulation. The surface effect depends on variety. Hard plastics create bright planes, twisted wire gives contour, and damaged wood gives weight and roughness. He uses those differences to model fur, feathers, scales, and beaks without relying on paint alone.

This material choice gives the work its force. The sculpture is not only about recycling as an idea; it is made from the physical residue of overproduction and disposal. Many pieces preserve the marks of their former lives: dents, logos, faded colour, rust, and wear. That visible history keeps the work from becoming pure decoration. It stays tied to extraction, consumption, and the city’s waste stream.

Why does Bordalo II matter?

Bordalo II matters because he helped make environmental sculpture legible in public space without losing the roughness of street art. His work is immediately readable as an animal, which draws in passersby, but the material logic pushes the viewer toward a harder thought: the image is built from the same discarded matter that the modern city produces in abundance. That tension gives the work its public impact.

He also expanded what large-scale street art can look like. Many muralists work on a flat surface; Bordalo II turns walls into assemblages with depth, shadow, and protrusion. The pieces function as urban landmarks, but they are not polished monuments. They remain visibly patched, nailed, and improvised, which keeps the process present in the finished object.

What does his work look like in practice?

Most Bordalo II works depict wildlife: foxes, raccoons, owls, elephants, birds, fish, and other animals that can stand in for threatened ecosystems. The choice is strategic. Animals carry emotional recognition, and their forms let him use irregular material in a way that still reads clearly from the street. Often the eyes or snout become the visual anchor, while the rest of the body is assembled from layered scraps that mimic volume and motion.

The finished pieces usually appear loud in colour and dense in surface. Seen from afar, they read as bold public icons. Seen close, they reveal a complicated inventory of rubbish arranged with care. That double reading is central to his method: the work attracts attention first as spectacle and then as evidence. It asks the same material to operate both as image and as record.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Bordalo II a graffiti artist or a sculptor?

He is both, but neither label covers the whole practice. His roots lie in street art, yet his best-known works are relief sculptures and installations built from found materials. The street context remains important because he makes work for public view and often places it in direct relation to walls, facades, and neglected urban sites.

Why are animals so central to his work?

Animals give his work a direct visual identity and make the environmental message immediate. They also let him echo the contradiction between nature and waste: living forms are built from dead material. Endangered species are especially effective because they connect the aesthetics of the sculpture to broader questions of habitat loss and consumption.

Does he actually recycle the materials he uses?

Yes, but his work is not recycling in the everyday household sense. He salvages discarded materials and transforms them into sculpture rather than sending them back into industrial processing. The point is not only reuse, but visible transformation, where the debris remains identifiable and carries its former life into the new work.