With a career spanning three decades, critically acclaimed visual artist Charly D'Almeida, whose atelier is based in Cotonou, is one of the driving forces furthering the establishment and international radius of contemporary art from Benin, with a following of dedicated collectors across the African continent, Europe at large and The United States. 

Concerned with the perils plaguing our modern society, D'Almeida’s articulates an arresting body of work that  confronts viewers with notions of materialism, mass consumerism and sustainability. In his creative practice, D’Almeida aspires to transfigure the human experience by way of a visual narrative that is intrinsically dystopian, bold and arresting.

Although formerly trained as a painter, Charly D'Almeida has been perfecting his creed as a sculptural ironsmith in the course of the past 15 years, which today confers him the status of a master. Known for molding uniquely idiosyncratic sculptures, through an ingenious use of scraped metal parts and other recycled components, Charly D’Almeida feverishly repurposes, recomposes and reconstitutes the discarded fragments of our humanity, to create intricate structures that are all together mesmerizing, gleeful yet at times unnerving. 

D'Almeida conceives each work of art as a prayer addressed to Ogun, the emblematic God of Iron & War and the Patron of all Silversmiths, in Benin’s Cosmogony. As if ignited by this divine bolt, metal becomes a means for transmutation, through which the artist reshapes matter itself, ultimately baring apparent the abuse of Mankind upon its environment.  

In essence, Charly D'Almeida's sculptures are the portraits of every day life individuals, encountered on a street corner, in transit at an airport, or at the terrace of a café. They are the constituants of a human race in search of redemption.