Flav was born in what is now known as São Paulo, Brazil. His artistic and entrepreneurial practice centers on a core critique: the destabilization of time and its relationship to power, control, and alienation under systems of techno-capitalism.
Flav exists in productive contradiction. He creates with technology while critiquing its colonial applications. His entrepreneurial career provides both stability and creative constraint—a practical container for artistic thinking that shapes his approach to business.
As he describes it: "I exist between worlds: Not fully American though I live in the US; positioned between Brazilian nationality and European heritage through his Portuguese mother and father of Italian descent; carrying European heritage and privilege while my queerness places me at odds with Euro-Christian traditions. As an immigrant, I find kinship with historically marginalized communities like quilombolas and Indigenous peoples. I inhabit these contradictions—neither fully Global North nor South—creating with technology while simultaneously critiquing its applications. I dwell in the middle spaces."
After completing his studies in social communications in São Paulo, Flav began his career at Small World, his first H1B sponsor, producing large-scale online games after moving to New York City. After serving as an Art-then-Creative Director at Lumina Americas (with clients such as Kraft, US Air Force, and Kmart), he co-founded the digital product studio 10012 d/b/a Masson in 2003. This venture secured his creative and operational independence through self-sponsorship of his immigration status.
Under Masson, his team executed digital campaigns for Nike, introduced Chase Bank to Spanish-speaking markets, developed games for Bravo TV, HBO, and Showtime, and collaborated extensively with AARP for 14 years, constructing the world's largest civil rights story archive (winning a Webby and securing an O1 Visa for extraordinary ability in the arts that led to permanent residency).In 2011, Flav broadened his practice through a joint venture that served clients including IBM, Vanguard, Humana, Vertex, Gilead, and BlueCross BlueShield. He also launched Rangri (a food delivery platform developed with UNICEF) and co-founded GoodLife Media™, where he remains a partner.
These corporate engagements aren't separate from his artistic practice but constitute a crucial element of it—they represent his lived experience of time's colonization under capitalist economics, where "work as means of subsistence" fragments one's potential for integrated being. Through this tension, Flav documents the very alienation his art seeks to critique.
The pandemic in 2020 catalyzed Flav's deeper inquiry into conventional approaches for innovation, eventually leading to a sabbatical from August 2022 through August 2023. This period offered an expanded sense of time outside market demands—a deliberate break from productivity imperatives. Through research and introspection, this temporal space led to an emerging commitment to aliveness as a response to the limitations of Taylorism and technological determinism.
Upon returning, his practice began exploring what he terms a Minimum Viable Softness—extending the familiar tech concept beyond products to consider what's minimally necessary for innovation to honor our relational obligations and expand our circle of concern.
Flav lives and works in NYC.
