Benjamin Sebastian: Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light
2024
‘Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light’ - Installation view at Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury - Image courtesy of the artist - 2024
Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light
Benjamin Sebastian
1st November - 29th November, 2024
CT20
➣ Press Release
➣ Extended exhibition text by Jane Scarth
➣ List of works
This predominantly new body of work by Benjamin Sebastian confronts their ancestral implication in violent structures of settler-colonialism, while holding space for a spiritually expansive understanding of our relationship to the world around us and the forces that shape it through multiple forms of coloniality. This exhibition reveals a visual language of stitch, pattern, symbolism and hybridity, developed to unravel complex personal and political histories.
Across performance, collage, textiles and sculptural practice, Sebastian’s poetic interrogation of their own selfhood provides a prism, revealing a spectrum of possible alternatives for being in relation with others, lands, histories, and that which exists beyond tangible experience. Sebastian holds within themselves a range of complex tensions - their queer non-binary identity, their neurodivergence and their deeply spiritual relationship to the world, alongside their settler-colonial Australian heritage. All of these factors inform both their artistic methodologies as well as the critical framework within which their practice is situated.
Benjamin Sebastian
1st November - 29th November, 2024
CT20
➣ Press Release
➣ Extended exhibition text by Jane Scarth
➣ List of works
This predominantly new body of work by Benjamin Sebastian confronts their ancestral implication in violent structures of settler-colonialism, while holding space for a spiritually expansive understanding of our relationship to the world around us and the forces that shape it through multiple forms of coloniality. This exhibition reveals a visual language of stitch, pattern, symbolism and hybridity, developed to unravel complex personal and political histories.
Across performance, collage, textiles and sculptural practice, Sebastian’s poetic interrogation of their own selfhood provides a prism, revealing a spectrum of possible alternatives for being in relation with others, lands, histories, and that which exists beyond tangible experience. Sebastian holds within themselves a range of complex tensions - their queer non-binary identity, their neurodivergence and their deeply spiritual relationship to the world, alongside their settler-colonial Australian heritage. All of these factors inform both their artistic methodologies as well as the critical framework within which their practice is situated.
‘Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light’ - Installation view at Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury - Image courtesy of the artist - 2024
‘Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light’ - Installation view at Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury - Image courtesy of the artist - 2024
The works in this exhibition hold these tensions and reveal a powerful interconnectedness between these states of being. The artworks bring forth other-than-human creatures - from hybrid zoomorphic bodies to amorphously gendered entities - who not only defy the so-called ‘natural’ order but also exist beyond it. Sebastian has spoken of their art practice as a ‘process of manifesting something-not-yet-known’, realised through queer and neurodivergent methodologies that are allied with esoteric practices. By holistically embracing these as alternative ways of being in the world, there is a genuine and powerful opportunity for new possibilities to emerge, beyond the persistent colonial logics that shape our reality.
All of these ideas are explored through the lens of their own lived experience and personal histories. We encounter family photographs, homoerotic male bodies, quilted fragments of their mother’s discarded clothes, the forms of spirits they have been in relation with since adolescence, alongside performance relics imbued with queer symbolism. Through these objects, Holding the Shadow While Calling Back The Light is a call to directly confront ancestral and societal traumas, while welcoming a joyful spectrum of possibilities beyond them.
All of these ideas are explored through the lens of their own lived experience and personal histories. We encounter family photographs, homoerotic male bodies, quilted fragments of their mother’s discarded clothes, the forms of spirits they have been in relation with since adolescence, alongside performance relics imbued with queer symbolism. Through these objects, Holding the Shadow While Calling Back The Light is a call to directly confront ancestral and societal traumas, while welcoming a joyful spectrum of possibilities beyond them.
‘The Seemingly Innocent Are Not Without Danger’ (detail) - calico, cotton thread, silver gelatin photographic print, reconstructed nylon flag - W:26 x H:18cm - 2024
‘Taut’ (detail) - calico, cotton thread, inkjet print on calico, reconstructed nylon flag, tin eyelets - W:35 x H:20cm - 2024
Acknowledgements
Benjamin Sebastian was raised on the stolen lands of the Djabugay and Yidinji peoples and pays respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
This exhibition is made possible with National Lottery Project Grants funding from Arts Council England and will tour to Gallery 1853, Oldham (4th April – 2nd May 2025) and VSSL Studio, London (Summer 2025) with further venues to be announced.
Benjamin would like to sincerely thank Ash McNaughton, Mine Kaplangı, Matteo Cortés, Bean, Jane Scarth, Marco Berardi, Baiba Sprance, Anna Marsland, Molly Clark, Robyn Ellen, John Chandler, Ant The Elder and the creative teams at Tanks Arts Centre, Gallery 1853, VSSL Studio, Hebert Read Gallery, Cooke’s Framing, FUTURERITUAL and CT20 - without whose input, support and collaboration, this exhibition would not have been possible.
Related Media
➣ Read Sebastian’s recent interview with ArtVerge HERE
➣ Listen to Sebastian’s recent conversation with Studio & Gallery 1853 and KUPOD for their Our Art Podcast HERE
Benjamin Sebastian was raised on the stolen lands of the Djabugay and Yidinji peoples and pays respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
This exhibition is made possible with National Lottery Project Grants funding from Arts Council England and will tour to Gallery 1853, Oldham (4th April – 2nd May 2025) and VSSL Studio, London (Summer 2025) with further venues to be announced.
Benjamin would like to sincerely thank Ash McNaughton, Mine Kaplangı, Matteo Cortés, Bean, Jane Scarth, Marco Berardi, Baiba Sprance, Anna Marsland, Molly Clark, Robyn Ellen, John Chandler, Ant The Elder and the creative teams at Tanks Arts Centre, Gallery 1853, VSSL Studio, Hebert Read Gallery, Cooke’s Framing, FUTURERITUAL and CT20 - without whose input, support and collaboration, this exhibition would not have been possible.
Related Media
➣ Read Sebastian’s recent interview with ArtVerge HERE
➣ Listen to Sebastian’s recent conversation with Studio & Gallery 1853 and KUPOD for their Our Art Podcast HERE
