Brett Seiler: Men, bitumen and the art of hustling - The Harare-born artist on his journey from hipster in a dress to the embodiment of the zeitgeist
Hustle is an underrated virtue of artistic success, as indispensable as talent. When it comes to chutzpah in service of being noticed, Cape Town painter Brett Seiler has shown oodles of tenacity.
This waterway separating South Africa and Zimbabwe is an important landmark in Seiler’s early biography and émigré status. Brett Seiler’s ‘Reading list, 2019’ rendered using pine, canvas, Belgian linen, roof paint and bitumen “I had a very liberal family,” says Seiler. “My parents had no issue with me being gay. I think the issues came from the outside world.”
An angsty teenager who was ostracised at school, Seiler was expelled for his promiscuous behaviour in the bathroom. He sought refuge online. Seiler was a prolific user of the instant messaging app Mxit, which he used to connect with gay men in South Africa. Seiler’s early photography reveals a set of aesthetic preoccupations about the self and its narration to the world that endures in his paintings. In less highfalutin language, his early photos hint at the effect of selfie culture on an increasingly tattooed youth.“They are kind of little drawings or notes,” says Seiler, who has the words “The Lovers” tattooed on his throat. “I have a lot of exes on my body. I have done some myself.
Seiler has frequently referenced his father in his work, for instance listing him as among the things he missed in an eccentrically framed text painting shown at SMAC Gallery in 2019. In another text painting from 2019, he scrawled the words “A portrait of a lonely gay man on Fathers Day” in loud uppercase.
He also transcribed clauses relating to the legal status of homosexuality in the 54 countries of Africa on an A2 sheet of paper. Seiler pivoted to painting after his 2017 debut solo exhibition, Macho Man, Tell It to My Heart, which included another flagpole installation. “He’s able to mash personal histories with references to queer activism and literature without being pretentious, and to be funny without being sarcastic.”
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