Henrique Netto

Henrique Netto (Brazil) is a visual artist working across film and visual arts. Since 2021, he has been developing the the Electroctopus imaginary—an ongoing speculative project that investigates the transformation of planetary life through digitalization and the gradual cyborgization of the human life

Drawing on science fiction, critical theory, and post-humanist thought, Netto explores what it means to exist in an era where the boundaries between organic life and machine intelligence are rapidly dissolving. His imagined figure of the Electroctopus serves as a metaphor for this evolutionary turning point. No longer solely human, no longer purely mechanical, this being embodies a new phase of existence: fluid, emotional, statistically networked.

Through digital iconography, fragmented bodies, and anatomical emojis, Netto reconfigures how we perceive identity, emotion, and connection in the algorithmic age. His work does not mourn a lost humanity but instead speculates and criticizes on what it might become—an augmented self where feeling and flesh are shaped by synthetic systems, neural data and human hacking, all conditioned by some random board of investors in a monopolistic mega corporation.

Rejecting binary oppositions of man vs. machine, nature vs. technology, Netto invites us into a liminal realm where the human is continuously rewritten. A poetic, unsettling reflection on what it means to evolve in tandem with the digital structures we create.