Fabio Faoza - about me

First half of the 1970s
The small town has no electricity*; the lights come from gas lamps and the lighthouse itself, which, in a circular pattern that lasts all night, illuminates some houses for a few seconds. Mainly the roofs.

The child (Fábio) with hair bleached by the sun, spends most of his days playing in the sand in his backyard or on the beach. Two blocks separated the two places.

My favorite game is to create "toys" with the shells that were found in their thousands, probably millions, all along the beach, in multiple sizes, shapes and colors. I also used "pieces of the sea", wet and dry seaweed, twigs, fish bones, crab carcasses, bottle caps and pieces of plastic packaging that came from the other side of the ocean or perhaps thrown from a ship, many of them already quite discolored by the salt water and the sun. Pieces of unknown beings, sort of "fossilized", were mixed with shells and plastics... almost everything, for me, was a piece. To assemble.

The soundtrack for the construction of my "toys" was the sound of the waves crashing, the wind whistling and the seagulls fighting over fish.

One "toy" that I remember in detail, started with me digging an oval hole in the sand, where I could fit sitting inside with my legs bent. I would shape a flat area in front of this hole with the help of a piece of smooth wood or the sole of a flip-flop, and I would start decorating this flat space with shells, plastic bottle caps, twigs... which, when placed in this smooth part, would transform into buttons, controls, handles, levers... and with a few more lines drawn with a twig, that was it! The control panel of my spaceship was ready. By pressing the "buttons" and moving the "levers", the aircraft would take to the sky in seconds, and suddenly... I could see distant planets ready to land.

That's how I spent most of my days, with my feet planted in the sand and my head in outer space, until the last ray of sunlight or the first star appeared in the sky.

São Paulo (SP), 2000s

It's been a few decades since Fábio, also known as Faoza, a pseudonym-corruption of my full name, "FA" for Fábio, "O" for Monteiro and "ZA" for Souza.

The "building games" continue daily, only the pieces have changed over the years: little pieces of pencil tips rubbed against the paper with a cotton ball, markers, paints to color acetates, with a brush, for animation films, pieces of magazines cut for collages, comics drawn to make people laugh, pixels to create covers and illustrations, more pixels to create logos and digital communication pieces and even more pixels to create drawings intended for fine art print.

Every day I check what I consider beautiful and ugly, what I consider relevant to be drawn and what makes me feel good when drawing. This daily exercise helps in the attempt - often successful - to "build" a drawing with the potential to still make me fly to distant planets.

Drew & Designer
In addition to my personal work (from my collection), I create covers and illustrate for publishers such as Santillana, Meio & Mensagem, Richmond, Positivo, Abril, Globo, Ediouro, Moderna, Saraiva, SM and Folha de São Paulo.
I also illustrate for communication agencies and design studios.
I have worked for the agencies Norton, DPZ and sapient_AG2 as a graphic designer and UX/UI designer.
I worked as an assistant art director at the animation production company "Filme de Papel", creator of award-winning films such as the feature film "O Menino e o Mundo", nominated for the 2016 Oscar.

Group Exhibitions
São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Sarajevo, Lisbon, Porto and Shanghai.

* Interesting fact
In 1883, Dom Pedro II inaugurated the city's first public lighting service, making Campos dos Goytacazes the first city in Brazil and Latin America to receive electric public lighting, through a steam-powered thermoelectric plant driven by three dynamos with a power of 52 kW, supplying energy to 39 lamps of 2,000 candles each.
Cabo de São Thomé is located fifty kilometers southeast of the city of Campos dos Goytacazes.