Based in Porto, Fine Art student drop out, Xavier Paes divides his practice between the undefined fields of visual arts, sound, performance, improvisation, gleaning, activism and multi-instrumentalism. Devout practitioner of the zenoise philosophy, navigates the exploratory and divinatory arts of alternative realities through ideas such as acoustic phenomena, repetition, resonant bodies, echo and ecology.
Part of the experimental music duo Dies Lexic, eco-pedagogic Refluxo Colective, goth-surf-no-wave multinacional band MOSCXS, co-director of the experimental orchestra Em Chame and of the fluid organization of Porto’s Noise Bomb. He’s also a former member of the music label and collective Favela Discos, and of the exhibition space and collective Atelier Logicofobista.
Having passed through art institutions, galleries, festivals, raves, after parties and kiosks, highlights spaces like Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ma, USA), Cafe Oto (London), Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art (Porto), Galeria Zé dos Bois (Lisbon), Villa Arson (Nice), STUK (Leuven), Centro Botín (Santander), NUB Project Space (Pistoia), Overtoon (Brussels), Stichting Centrum (Hague), Dar Meso (Tunis), OCCII (Amsterdam) and La Pointe Lafayette (Paris).
Paes collaborates regularly with Inês Tartauga Água, and has worked with artists such as Alex Zhang Hungtai, Olan Monk, Marcela Lucatelli, Nuno da Luz, Gabriel Ferrandini, Nuno Marques Pinto and Diana Lola Posani.
In 2025 he was an artist in residence at MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Spatial Sound Lab, developing FLARES, a surround piece for a 7.1 channel sound system, a work delving around ideas such as solar flares, interference, electromagnetism, “swing”, resonance and celestial bodies, funded by the program SHUTTLE – Ágora – Cultura e Desporto do Porto, E.M.

A multidisciplinary maker, enthusiast of radical regeneration, sculptor of sonic situations, and supporter of the “DIY” philosophy. Her practice spans from visual arts and performance. She has participated in group exhibitions and public events since 2013, including “Убежище / Suoja / Shelter Festival – Laboratory” (Helsinki, 2019), “48 часов Новосибирск” (Siberia, 2019), or “Derivas e Criaturas – New Acquisitions of the Municipal Art Collection” and “The Affect of Listening” (Porto, 2021 and 2023). Água has been featured in various venues, festivals, and institutional derivatives, having briefly appeared in spaces as diverse as Kunsthalle Freeport, OCCII, Radialsystem, Casa das Conchas, Atelier Logicofobista, Galeria Dentro, Galeria Zé dos Bois, Centro Botín, Casa de Serralves, Dar Meso, and La Pointe de LaFayette, and, more recently, MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Living Gallery. Along with Xavier Paes, with whom she frequently collaborates, Água is one of the minds behind the organism REFLUXO and DIES LEXIC.