Alexandre Monteiro, aka Hopare, was born in Limours, France. His first contact with street art came when he was just 12 years of age and was returning home after a long day at school. Alexandre stumbled upon an old factory he saw dozens of times before, but only this time something was different. He started with illegal tagging and experimenting with the medium, but was not really making too much progress – up until the day he saw eye to eye with his art professor who was accidently none other than Shaka, a well-known French street artist that is actually still in the game to this day.