“A form of practical, magical thinking underpins the majority of my creative practice...”

about

“...I’m obsessed with our innate, creative potential to manifest something from nothing... and how that can be extrapolated into alternative ways of being in & co-creating our world(s). That - for me - is an entirely magical processes and I revel in the irrational and intuitive prospects of it.”

Benjamin Sebastian (1980 AUS/GB) is a trans-disciplinary visual artist and curator living in London (U.K.). Their work spans performance, sculpture, curation, video, text, installation, drawing & new media - rooted in processes of bricolage, assemblage, collage, ritual & D.I.Y. cultural production.

Through harmonizing nonbinary perspectives with neurodivergent cognition, Sebastian weaves nascent narratives into existence, offering alternative ways of remebering, being here-and-now, and charting pathways to futures yet formed.

Sebastian proposes their work might be imagined as: “... a constellation of mirrors; reflecting aspects of the body, times, spaces & relationships I (have) inhabit(ed) - or - as world-making experiments, manifested through intuitive, erotic and esoteric methodologies.”

Sebastian facilitates temporal environments of exchange, reflection & visioning via exhibitions and cultural programming in their work as co-founding director & curator of both ]performance s p a c e [; nurturing the prime conditions for performance art(ists) in the U.K. - and - VSSL Studio; an artist-led gallery & creative suite centring contemporary, queer visual art practices.

They hold a BA Fine Art HONS (1st Class) from the University of Lincoln and MA Curating Art and Public Programmes through Whitechapel Gallery/London Southbank University - Sebastian’s continued research interests include; Artificial Intelligence, Occult Practices, Queer Ecologies, Decolonialism, Transhumanism, Contemporary Performance & Visual Art. They are currently funded by Arts Council England through the National Lottery Project Grants scheme (2023/25).

Some of their most recent activities include: performance of ‘Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light’ as part of Pretty Doomed at Ugly Duck (2023), exhibition of ‘Benjamin Sebastian + Alicia Radage’ at VSSL Studio (2023) curating ‘FACET’ at VSSL Studio (2023), guest curating the ‘Intersect series’ at the Live Art Development Agency (2023), speaking on the symposium; ‘Art, Memory & Place’ at Turner Contemporary (2022), as well as performance of their live installation ‘3 Reflections²’ as part of FUTURERITUAL at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2022).

Additional recent activity has included: curating ‘PSX: A Decade of Performance Art in the U.K.’ (2021) on behalf of ]performance s p a c e [, exhibition of their solo show ‘Working With Entities//Setting Intent’ (2021) at VSSL Studio, and curation of VSSL Studio’s inaugural programme; ‘Gathering in a Time of Plague’ (2021).

A complete history of Sebastian’s activity may be viewed through their archive.

projects

VSSL Studio
- was co-founded in 2020 by Benjamin Sebastian & Joseph Morgan Schofield and activated in 2021 with the gallery’s inaugural public programme; ‘Gathering in a Time of Plague’, funded by Arts Council England and co-curated by the galleries founders. In 2023 VSSL secured its’ second Arts Council England grant to deliver; ‘FACET’, curated by Benjamin Sebastian and produced by Ash McNaughton & Mine Kaplangi.

A place of gathering and creation, VSSL is a not-for-profit artistic studio and gallery housing multiple artists and projects - a site for artistic production and engagement, dedicated to the holding and nurturing of contemporary (queer) visual art and its’ satellites.

VSSL is a queer-led organisation centering queer artistic practice.

www.vssl-studio.org

]performance s p a c e [
- was co-founded in 2011 by Benjamin Sebastian & Bean with the mission: ‘to nurture the prime conditions for performance art(ists) in the U.K.’

Sebastian continues as a founding director alongside ]ps[ associate director; Ash McNaughton.

]ps[ is regularly funded by Arts Council England, most recently in 2021 for the organisations 10th anniversary programme; ‘PSX: A Decade of Performance Art in the U.K.’.

]performance s p a c e [ is a queer led organisation that aims to:

“... nurture the prime conditions for performance art(ists) in the U.K. We are committed to supporting challenging and difficult practices that embrace performance art as an ever-evolving medium.”

www.performancespace.org

Becoming Constellation
- was initiated in 2016 by Benjamin Sebastian as an ever evolving / incompletable, transmedial artwork and exhibition.

Encompassing sigil craft, tattooing, visual art exhibition & a continually growing collaborator set; Becoming Constellation seeks to map queer narrative production across people, geographies and time. Collaborators to date include:

Fabiola Paz,
Dani de’Emilia,
Ryan Burke,
JD Melling,
Keoui Keijaun Thomas,
Alicia Radage,
Andre Braga Verissimo,
Bean,
Joseph Morgan Schofield,
Matteo Cortés,
Jade Montserrat
and Esther Neff.

becoming constellation

“A form of practical, magical thinking underpins the majority of my creative practice...”

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