A multidisciplinary Chilean artist working between painting, tattooing, curating, and the graphic disciplines — based in Berlin, where very little sleep gets done.
Felipe Lira (b. 1988) is a multidisciplinary Chilean artist based in Berlin. His practice is shaped by a sustained engagement with poverty and the exploitative structures of contemporary capitalism, with recurring investigations into politics, consumerism, class, and family life.
Husband. Father of one child and a Jack Russell Terrier. Artist.
Since 2010, Lira has worked across a wide range of techniques and materialities in pursuit of what it means to make art at all. His formation is rooted in the graphic disciplines — engraving, painting, tattooing, poster design, and collaborative work — developed through more than a decade of continuous practice and reflection.
In 2021, during an ordinary visit to a Berlin supermarket, Lira encountered fruit imported from the region of Chile in which he was raised. The moment proved pivotal. It returned him, without warning, to the landscapes and contradictions of his rural, working-class childhood — the warmth of its memories, and the difficulty of growing up within them. From that encounter emerged the central preoccupation of his current body of work: Working Class / Memory.
Since then, he has developed a sustained sequence of solo and group exhibitions around this idea. His projects move between narratives of rural life, the humble origins of now-celebrated Latin urban music artists, and installations built from everyday objects sourced across geographies. The work resonates emotionally while insisting on the often harsh realities behind daily life in many places — rendered, characteristically, in vivid color.
Since 2025, Lira has directed AKA Berlin Gallery — the exhibition space of AKA Berlin, one of Europe's most prestigious and long-established designer tattoo studios, where he is also part of a select team of tattoo artists.