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Bio
Vivek Sebastian, a Brooklyn-based artist who was born in Texas and spent his formative years in India, predominantly works as a painter. His work concerns anti imperialist politics, history and philosophy. He is also interested in dissident myths, research practices, and histories. He maneuvers viewers to question the potential imperialist origins of their methodologies. His paintings are intended to unravel over time as the viewer comes across the sourced image in news, social media, or film elsewhere. The work transforms into renegotiated, decolonized metaphors, retaining traces of previous signifiers while asserting agency as new organisms. Sebastian’s use of impasto renders mass and paint drips interrupt the visual hierarchy. By caressing, scraping, cutting, or stretching, the medium is inscribed onto the body itself. Using plastic colors as a reference to the petrochemical source of acrylic paint, he treats the surface with a byproduct of fossilized organic materials, seeing the history of western painting as a preserved corpse. The labor of painting serves as an alchemical purification of the soul via political, philosophical and psychological exploration.
His recent interest lies in a speculative fantasy approach to visualizing nationhood, drawing from the revolutionary origins of his native countries India and the US, former colonies now prone to imperialist tendencies and fascist overtures. He explores themes of martyrdom, emancipation, nationalism and whether postcolonial sovereignty is doomed to eventual fascism.
Sebastian, a proud member of Teamsters Local 814, is a working-class artist who holds himself against bourgeois interpretations of aesthetics.
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