Sei | Contemporary Artist: Artworks & Biography

Sei was born and raised in Ehime on the island of Shikoku (Japan). Her youth took place in an urban environment where the spirit of consumerism was everywhere. A diligent student, she graduated with a degree in Linguistics at age 21, before flying to Australia where she lived for four years. In 2009, she settled in France and attended classes at the School of Fine Arts in Versailles.\nSei is passionate about animals. Rabbits, her favourite, have become her subject of choice. They represent both a pet and a farm animal, killed for meat or coveted for its fur. In addition, the rabbit is a powerful symbol in many cultures. Feeding silently on shoots and grasses at dusk, it embodies the transition between day and night, and so it symbolizes rebirth and the cycle of life. A message of hope for all those creatures whose fate concerns the artist. Playing on the ambivalence of the verb ‘to suspend’ she suspends her canvases to denounce the hand of the man who ""suspends"" their lives.\nSei is a committed artist who campaigns against the exploitation of animals for food or clothing such as fur coats. Her works have a double meaning; these naive and childish animals represent a disguised message against the consumer society.\nGradually, she has been developing a novel technique where drawings, cutouts and collages marry. She begins by drawing an animal with mixed ink (India ink, gouache and pigment) and then creates a collage based on newsprint, voluntarily allowing bits of text to appear. In her work, she uses different colours and especially black to ""express death."" The artist then sprinkles her paintings with dots, inspired by Buddhist philosophy in which the life of every being is represented by a bubble that rises towards the sky to evaporate, and then be reborn on earth in a eternal cycle. She draws her influences from painters. Francis Bacon and Jean-Michel Basquiat (twentieth century) influence her with their denunciation of violence and Cueco Henri (French painter, figurative narrative) with his animal paintings.\nSince arriving in France, Sei has been a translator in several artistic structures. She continues her art at the same time and has exhibited in various galleries in Paris. In 2011, she was awarded the Beaux-Arts de Versailles prize at the ""Artists in the street"" event.\n