Artist of the week: Bárbara Moura

Bárbara Moura is an illustrator natural from Lisbon, Portugal. Lately she’s been focused on digital drawing, and also striving for emotional drawings that can make the world a little better, therefore with much more political impact, concerning human rights, LGBT rights, feminism and world problems.KALTBLUT: Tell us about your creative background – when did you first start illustrating/what really pushed you to do so?Barbara:

I started doodling very very early at home with my mother, as I only went to school by the age of 5. But I didn’t think that was what I would turn out to do. I went to National Film School in Portugal and then to Central Saint Martins to do my MA, and only after that I realised illustration was the most independent and fair way for me to express myself, without being relying on other people, money or any kind of resource than my will to continuously and spontaneously express myself.

KALTBLUT: There is a certain denunciation about your illustrations, what are you inspiration?

Barbara: I get inspired by mostly everything really. By music, by poetry, by light. By the occult. By the Pre-Raphaelites, by anatomical medical drawings, by the art of the turn of the 20th century. By Harry Clarke, Aubrey Beardsley, W. Heath Robinson, by Art Nouveau, by erotic art, and by day to day stories.

KALTBLUT: What is the message you want to get across to viewers of your work? And why is it important to spread this news?

Barbara: I think the most important overall message I want to spread is that we should feel responsible as artists, more than ever, to not just produce ‘shiny objects’ but to try and denunciate and provoke, to be political, and most of all humanitarian and never scared. This is important because we are slowly awakening in a world of pestilent intolerance like I didn’t think I would be alive to see.

KALTBLUT: How does actually people react to your work?

Barbara: Well there are two common ways people react to it. If I am lucky, they are usually moved by it. But there are a lot of reactions relating to the fact I do digital illustration, there is still a certain despise for this sort of practice I think, and not much space for it in the gallery world.

KALTBLUT: Nowadays, everybody get a different definition for feminism. What’s yours? And how do you express it through your work?

Barbara: This is a topic which would require a very extensive answer. But let’s cut it short and put it like this: I stand for the equality of all humans in all things. So, my definition of feminism stands against women getting mutilated in less developed countries, women getting paid less than men, women being endlessly cat called, bitch shamed; women not being protected by law if they are sex workers. Women not having the right to abortion. Women being absolutely objectified all over everything and everywhere, and I could go on forever. I did a lot of drawings concerning this issues to an amazing platform called The Establishment, and mostly try and reflect this on self-portraits, or according to world news, like the burqa ban in France and so on.

KALTBLUT: Have you found any other work/artists to be really inspiring currently?

Barbara: A lot! I love Polly Nor’s drawings, Joan Cornellà, Alex Gardner, Regards Coupables’s drawings, Tati Compton’s tattoos, Synchrodogs’s photos, Anna Sampson’s gender merging photos, DRIFT’s ‘devotional synth’ music, Paula Rêgo, only so so many inspiring humans in the world.

KALTBLUT: What is your ultimate goal?

Barbara: To produce a vast, honest and consistent body of work that will simultaneous portrait my growth and the world in all its flaws so one day we look back and think: ‘ wow, the things human cruelty is capable of.’