After years of artistic exploration, Anjo Bolarda dials into his “shadow self” and makes cleverly nuanced, prismatica art as his namesake character BITTO.

Words Khyne Palumar
November 8, 2024

In 2020, Anjo Bolarda put out BITTO: his artist moniker and the central character in a series of works that, at the outset, captured the silent hum of pandemic quarantine. The episodic slices of life— painted in acrylic, animated, and shared on Instagram—featured Bolarda’s lipless, inky-skinned avatar with brightly colored hair engaged in ordinary activities like watering plants, frying an egg, playing with his cat, and binge-watching on a laptop while plopped on a couch.

“When I started BITTO, the main message I wanted to get across was you don’t have to be the best, you don’t need to be number one. He has no interest in being any of those things,” Bolarda, a self identified “over-worker” who welcomed “chillness” through BITTO, says. At the time of his chat with Art+ Magazine, the 37-year-old is wearing a studio BITTO tee with the words “Rest Is Priority” printed across the chest. The shirt is a cult hit among his followers (numbering well over 14,000 on Instagram alone). “People relate to it. They would often comment, ‘Shit, I need this.’ I guess it’s also a reminder for me because I always say, let’s rest, but I always overwork,” Bolarda admits. “Actually, the funny thing is, the acronym for Rest Is Priority is R.I.P.,” he adds with a laugh.

This wry sense of humor and ability to poke fun at himself is at the heart of Bolarda’s world-building and has kept the project rolling four years later. BITTO has since stepped out of his living room, experiencing the world at large through a fantastical universe populated by three other colorful and striking characters (more on them later). Bolarda has also stuck with the name. “I’ve gone through different styles and mediums just to find my artistic identity. It turned out that when I created BITTO, I found what I really wanted to do in the long-term,” he says.