Patrick Cabral Creates Public Awareness About Endangered Species Through Cut Paper Sculptures

At first glance, his works look like some incredibly intricate lacework, but a closer inspection reveals this delicate work is created out of paper! Such is the finesse of Patrick Cabral, who goes by the name of Darkgravity on his Instagram page. All his elaborate creations are focused only on one subject – animals. This is because he’s a staunch supporter of the conservation of threatened species.

This Filipino artist creates his paper sculptures by joining them layer by layer and giving them shape, tiny cut by tiny cut. How he creates such intricate lacy patterns and turns them into stunning portraits of wildlife is to be seen to be believed. Sample his octopus complete with alternating gold and white ribbed tentacles that dangle from the body or his amazingly detailed sculpture of rhinoceros. Each and every creation of his, which comprise hundreds of individual hand-cut paper pieces, is mesmerizing, to say the least.

What motivates Cabral to choose wildlife as his subject is his desire to increase public awareness of conservation issues. He shares his views on worldwildlife.org, thus, “My art can help educate the younger generation about the plight of these species. I want everyone to go beyond social media and contribute their time and presence to causes that are important to them.” On his part, he donates half of his profits from the sale of his species sculptures to WWF-Philippines.

This artist, who’s based in Manila, Philippines, was passionate about art since his childhood. His first love was calligraphy. So good was he that when he was just 11, his high school authorities gave him the task of writing names on diplomas of graduating high school students. Later, he went on to become a web developer and animator and worked for both local and international clients on corporate branding, digital advertising, and fashion. Not only this, but he also developed a mobile app game called Pugo that remained number one in the Apple App Store for two weeks straight!

Cabral’s multi-disciplinary talents came to the fore when he changed tracks to acquire skills for cut paper sculptures. He displayed the same finesse with paper as he did with calligraphy and the result was simply astounding. His mastery over multi-layered sculptures of tigers, pandas, pangolins, and other threatened animals soon began to attract attention. It comes as no surprise that today Cabral enjoys a viewership of over 86,000 on Instagram alone.