S E R Á B S A R A B I A

Seráb is a first generation interdisciplinary artist who was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. He received his Bachelors of Arts and a minor in Education at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in 2018. There he questioned where the medium of photography “failed” and began creating a visual language which combined photography and printmaking.

His work helped him receive the Irwin Grant, and Eduardo Carrillo Memorial Art Scholarships. During his time at UCSC, he attended multiple field research trips and received a research grant to study abroad at Massey University, College of the Creative Arts in Wellington, New Zealand. Throughout his undergrad he documented his father's fight with chronic illness up to his passing during summer 2018. 

In the course of his gap year, the work he produced and continues to create focuses on process, loss and his own internal conflicts & trauma. In 2020 he became a Masters of Fine Arts candidate at California College of the Arts (CCA). He was a recipient of the 2022 Barclay Simpson Award and is part of the CCA Photography Mentored Teaching Fellowship for the 2023-2024 School Year. 

Seráb’s current work “Family Album" weaves ideas of what it means to be seen and what is deliberately left out or missing, like a corrupt file. These works introduce questions of identity, church, and examine the interdependence of complex familial relationships.

Through examining his personal vernacular photography, Seráb’s work looks inward, to the ephemeral, to the use of process heavy mediums such as emulsion lifts, cyanotypes, and photo-lithography. Through his work with alternative processes, Seráb is able to invoke ideas of opacity, and anonymity, keeping the work intimate while investigating the archive.

Through his lens Seráb examines multiple facets of his subject’s lives, the spaces he is inhabiting, and the place he calls home. He currently resides in San Francisco where he teaches, coaches, and leads youth & adult art programs during the summer.