Silvester Hustito a.k.a. Sobé, Why Am I Alive Now?
May 3 – June 16, 2024
Opening Friday, May 3, 5-7pm

"With a bat to the head, I fall towards sweet earth. I can see the stars in the sky, pulsating with each throb. I wish I had listened to mom, but here I lay, severely injured, maybe dying. I'm given a second chance to visit the stars, to visit the spirit beings. Finally, I am done with earth, I can move on to be with my ancestors. I can RIP.

The sounds of the morning birds bring me back from the darkness. The city is coming back to life. The spirits are not letting me join them so fast. I have work to do. I smile and ask myself 'Why am I alive now?'" --Sobé

Why Am I Alive Now? is the first New York solo exhibition by Silvester Hustito a.k.a. Sobé, a self-taught A:Shiwi (Zuni) artist born and raised in Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, a vibrant artists’ colony. After living in the Bronx for the past six years, Sobé recently returned to Zuni. Alongside a lifelong art practice, Sobé has previously launched a gallery space, zines, and magazines, creating space for contemporary Native artists. The Santa Fe New Mexican noted, “Hustito, an avid magazine fan […] grew up pouring over auction catalogs, spending hours studying the images and descriptions of artwork.”

This love of art’s printed matter permeates Sobé’s practice, with ongoing series of paintings that utilize the pages of auction catalogs or The Andy Warhol Diaries as ground. The artist correlates the transformational act of creating skins for paintings — dipping the paper of magazine pages into glue to create living surfaces — to private Zuni practices of reverence for all living things. Watching films from Warhol documentaries to Basquiat has also informed the artist’s intersectional sensibility, noting of the latter, “Watching this movie based on a minority living on the edge of both instant fame and homelessness, I understood what this character was facing in this vast world that did not know how to accept him.”

In 2022, the exchange of a gift between artists Sobé and ANOHNI led to a studio visit with ANOHNI and Participant Director Lia Gangitano. The resulting exhibition of recent painting, sculpture, and works on paper borrows its title from ANOHNI and the Johnson’s Why Am I Alive Now? a song from their 2023 album My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross, which features artwork by Sobé and Alvin Baltrop. ANOHNI has noted of the work: 

“Some of Sobé’s work portrays abstract faces and spirits of feminine, intergenerational, Two Spirit figures in states of presence, radiance, and, at moments, suffering. The painting’s visceral effect startled me, and I asked Sobé if we could include the painting in the artwork of my last record. Sobé’s work has a charge of urgent disruption, emotional clarity, and vividness, with portraits that reflect centuries of gracious tradition, violence, moral authority, inspired curiosity, and confounding survival strategy. The way Sobé has at times bound Two Spirit portraiture in conversation with images of Western figures from 20th Century underground queerdom is complex, decisive, and clarion. Sobé’s work is a revelation, articulating a new conversation, and drawing a generous teaching window.”