_Artur Barrio lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Much of his work consists of installation pieces that create interaction with the public. Barrio engages the viewer as participant in his art, often without their knowledge that it is art in which they are participating. By doing so, the participant can have an experience not removed from life but rather incorporated into it. Encouraging the conscious act of recognizing the “reality” of the things around us, including the discards of life such as garbage, Barrio dismantles the symbolic meanings we attach to objects.

Born in Porto, Portugal in 1945,  Barrio moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1955. He attended the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, one of the centers of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. His teachers included Onofre Penteado, Abelardo Zaluar, Mário Barata and Ítalo Campofiorito.

Barrio returned to Portugal during the Portuguese revolution in 1974 and in 1975 he moved to Paris and then to Amsterdam. In 2011, he was the representative for Brazil at the Venice Biennale. Currently, he lives successively in Amsterdam, Aix-en-Provence and Rio de Janeiro. Barrio exhibits his work internationally.