Bio
Sebastián Rodríguez Alarcón is a contemporary artist whose practice explores light, silence, and perception as ethical and metaphysical languages. Working primarily with photography and spatial composition, he creates minimal visual structures where luminosity, geometry, and emptiness become vehicles for inner experience. His work invites a slowed form of attention, offering spaces of stillness within a visually saturated world.
Born in Colombia and shaped by life between the Americas and Europe, Rodríguez Alarcón’s transnational background informs a practice situated between cultures, disciplines, and philosophical traditions. He holds academic training in law and international affairs and has worked in global institutions, where questions of ethics, power, and human dignity have deeply influenced his artistic vision.
Today, living and working in Paris, his work unfolds at the intersection of contemporary art, phenomenology, and spiritual inquiry. Through reduction and restraint, he approaches art as a site of encounter—between perception and memory, material and immaterial, the visible and the unseen.
Artist Statement
My work is an exploration of light as a spiritual, temporal, and ethical language. Through minimal photographic compositions and controlled spatial conditions, I seek moments where silence, geometry, and luminosity reveal a fragile inner order—intimate, almost sacred. Each image functions as a small architecture of attention: a place where perception slows, and where clarity replaces spectacle.
Born in Bogotá and shaped by a life across continents, my practice is informed by cultural displacement, philosophical inquiry, and an enduring search for transcendence within the everyday. Though trained as a lawyer and having worked within international institutions, it was through art that I learned to listen differently to the world—to what resists language, to what appears only in light and stillness.
My visual language evolved through formative years in New York, where exposure to Minimalism, Light & Space, and post-conceptual practices profoundly shaped my understanding of perception as experience rather than representation. These encounters led me to approach reduction not as formal style, but as a metaphysical and ethical act: an effort to move closer to what is essential.
I work with simple means and deliberate restraint. The use of accessible tools is not an aesthetic shortcut but an intentional gesture—affirming that meaning does not depend on technological virtuosity, but on attention, presence, and sensitivity. The medium remains secondary to the inner condition it seeks to reveal.
Earlier projects engaged explicitly with archive, identity, and queer memory through collage and recontextualization; my current work turns toward stillness, silence, and light as universal thresholds of experience. Sexuality, intimacy, and vulnerability remain embedded within the work—not as themes to illustrate, but as invisible forces shaping perception and presence.
Living in Paris, I work between philosophical traditions, spiritual inquiry, and contemporary visual culture. My practice unfolds in the tension between absence and presence, inner life and exterior world, material form and immaterial experience. It is a quiet search for a beauty that does not impose itself, but endures.
Selected Exhibitions
2012 — Como Perros y Gatos, Group Exhibition, The Warehouse Art Gallery, Bogotá, Colombia
2007 — Group Exhibition, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., USA
2006 — Coordenadas, Colegio San Bartolomé La Merced, Bogotá, Colombia
Education
2021 — MBA, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
2019 — Ambassador, Education Program, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA
2015 — LL.M. in Law, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
2013 — LL.B., Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia
Grants & Awards
2024 — Nominated, Visual Story Photography Award, The Independent Photographer, London, UK
2019 — 30 Under 30 Role Model, Out for Australia & The Boston Consulting Group, Sydney, Australia
2019 — Director’s Scholarship, The University of Sydney Business School, Sydney, Australia
2014 — Fellowship in Law, Center for Reproductive Rights, New York, USA
2014 — 3MT/MT180 Competition, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
2013 — Justice James K. Hugessen Fellowship in Law, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
2013 — Rathlyn Foundation Fellowship in Law, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
2013 — Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council Fellowship, Government of Canada
2013 — Open Society Foundations Scholarship, New York, USA
2009 — Ciro Angarita Barón Scholarship, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia
Selected Publications
Rodríguez-Alarcón, S., & Montoya-Robledo, V. (2019). The Unrestrained Corporatization and Professionalization of the Human Rights Field. Inter Gentes, 2(3).
Rodríguez-Alarcón, S., Miller, A., Cesario Alvim-Gomes, J. (2019). Zika before the Brazilian Supreme Court: From a Delay in Hearing to Denial of Rights? Yale Law School (JOTA).
Rodríguez-Alarcón, S. (2016). Why Colombians Rejected the Peace Agreement? HuffPost.
Rodríguez-Alarcón, S. (2015). Beyond Discrimination: A Reading from the Social Model of Disability to the Mental Health Conditions of LGBTQ People. McGill University Libraries.
Rodríguez-Alarcón, S., & Arango-Olaya, M. (2015). Intervention before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (OC-22/16). Center for Reproductive Rights, New York, USA.
Copyright & Intellectual Property Notice
Copyright & Moral Rights
All works and materials on this website — including photographs, text, design elements, and digital media — are the exclusive intellectual property of Juan Sebastián Rodríguez Alarcón and are protected by international copyright laws, treaties, and moral rights.
The artist retains all rights to the integrity and authorship of the works displayed.
Use and Permissions
Any use, reproduction, modification, adaptation, distribution, display, or commercial exploitation of this content — in whole or in part — is strictly prohibited without prior written authorization from the artist.
This includes, but is not limited to:
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Digital or print reproduction for personal or commercial purposes.
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Use of images in AI training datasets or machine learning applications.
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The minting or sale of works as NFTs or blockchain-based assets.
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Use in advertisements, editorials, or promotional materials without explicit consent.
Unauthorized use constitutes a violation of copyright and moral rights and may result in legal action, including formal takedown requests and other remedies under applicable law.
Fair Use and Educational Reference
Limited non-commercial use of the content for educational, scholarly, or journalistic purposes may be permissible under applicable “fair use” or equivalent doctrines — provided that:
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Proper attribution is given to Juan Sebastián Rodríguez Alarcón, and
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The material is not altered or misrepresented.
When in doubt, please seek written authorization prior to any use.
AI and Digital Manipulation
No material from this website may be used for the creation, training, or modification of AI-generated reproductions, deepfakes, or derivative works that distort or reinterpret the original artistic intent.
The artist expressly reserves moral rights to preserve the authenticity and integrity of all works presented.
NFTs and Blockchain
The tokenization, minting, or sale of any work from this website as an NFT or similar digital asset is strictly prohibited unless explicitly authorized in writing by the artist.
Any unauthorized blockchain-related use will be considered an infringement and pursued accordingly.
Jurisdiction and Legal Framework
This notice applies worldwide. Enforcement may be pursued under relevant national and international frameworks, including:
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The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works
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The U.S. Copyright Act (Title 17, U.S. Code)
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The European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market
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The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and equivalent international provisions
Legal action may be initiated in any competent jurisdiction at the discretion of Juan Sebastián Rodríguez Alarcón.
Contact
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