Hugo van Der Ding

Hugo van der Ding (b. 1978) was born on a beach in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, in the Atlantic Pyrenees, the son of a Belgian shepherd and an Argentinian mother who was soon lost. In his early years, he worked in the family's shepherding business until he fled to Bayonne, where he completed high school. He studied plate engineering at the University of Pau, in the Rive du Neez, still in the Atlantic Pyrenees. In 1992, he joined Cirques du Monde as a fakir's assistant until, in this wandering, he ended up in Uppsala, Sweden, where he had some success as a cover singer of Turkish folk music. He also lived in Czechoslovakia until the country changed its name to the Czech Republic, in Burma until it changed its name to Myanmar and in Zaire until it changed its name to Congo. At the invitation of the Regional Government of Madeira, he has been living in Lisbon since 2019, where he has been developing work in the fields of writing, theater and organic ceramics. He is also the unofficial honorary cultural consul of Ipar Euskal Herria (French Basque Country).