Sebastian Betancur-Montoya

A common conceptual thread legible in his artwork is the constant preoccupation for the body[ies] and its relation with[in] the surrounding space and its limits/conditions; the themes of home, language, migration, belonging and uprooting have become unavoidable for someone as him, who has lived on the move, away from his birth place half of his life.

Sebastián´s work has been part of exhibitions, publications, art residencies, and art fairs in Colombia, The Bahamas, Qatar, Russia, and Germany and participated in other events such as The 2015 Oslo Architecture Triennial, the 2015 Kuwait pavilion for the Venice Biennale, NYT art for tomorrow 2016, and the 2018 Istanbul design Biennial.

Abi and Sebastián´s collaboration is the product of a long series of conversations and an intention to explore together a common fascination for the Arabian Gulf shifting landscape and the contrast the man-made, architecture, objects, and materials sprawling in the region. The decision to work in the uncharted -for both- field of video art came as an attempt to meet in a neutral ground to build a piece beyond their individual work, a hybrid of their conceptual interests and technical skills: photography-image making and performance-sculpture.

The idea of a slowly moving photograph became also a poetic medium to transmit their vision, one of a universal and inapprehensible character[s], that at once shapes the environment around them and is reciprocally being shaped by it in their constant state of transit.