Seráb Sarabia
COVID_For_Lease
Heaven_at_Both_Ends
Ill_Be_Home_Tomorrow
La_Iglesia_De_Dios
Psalm_51
Artist Bio
Seráb is a traveling photographer who was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. He received his Bachelors of Arts and a minor in Education at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2018. There he questioned where the medium of photography failed and began creating a visual language which combined photography and printmaking. His work helped him receive the Irwin Grant, and Eduardo Carrillo Memorial Art Scholarships. During his time at UCSC, he attended multiple field research trips and received a research grant to study abroad at Massey University, College of the Creative Arts in Wellington, New Zealand. Throughout his undergrad he documented his father's fight with chronic illness up to his passing during summer 2018. In the course of his gap year, the work he produced and continues to create focuses on process, loss and his own internal conflicts. In 2020 he became a Masters of Fine Arts candidate at California College of the Arts. He is a recipient of the 2022 Barclay Simpson Award and currently resides in San Francisco, California.
Through his lens Seráb examines multiple facets of the place he calls home, his community and the spaces he is inhabiting.
Artist Statement
I am a first generation chicano artist who works in photography, video, printmaking, text, performance, and spoken word. I find comfort in documenting family, and creating art that conveys my own internal conflicts. The work that I have been doing and am interested in continuing to create is about complex familial relationships. As common as the idea may be, I dive deep into the roots of my struggles growing up in an underprivileged community in South Central Los Angeles while also exploring the intersections with church and the ritual aspect of religion.
The notion of family, and chronic illness have played major roles in influencing my early work. They still can be found in my recent projects but religion has now risen from the archives of my life as a point of departure. Going to church everyday ingrained religion within the walls of my mind. I am the son of a Pastor, and as my father’s health declined, so did his flock, and eventually his church fell, leaving behind only fragments of memory. Within this period, we moved constantly, and for many reasons as well. Since the start of the Pandemic, the whole world came to a halt, and with that the idea of space and location were brought to the forefront. This past year those themes have played an important role in influencing my work; not only in the specificity of location, but also in my attempt to understand the spaces I am inhabiting, home. These new works focus on tracing my past, making sense of the present and self identity through the use of photography, iconography, archiving, video and performance.