Sobé (Silvester Hustito)

I am Sobé, a self-taught A:shiwi (Zuni) artist born and raised in Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, a village rooted in ceremony, art, and living history. I was born into a community that safeguards its culture and traditions to sustain the health of the world, holding its ground within—and in resistance to—the vast expanse of America. I was blessed to be surrounded by living deities and by ceremonies centuries old, alive with color and song. 

After five years in the Bronx, I returned to Zuni, where I now live in view of the 17th-century Spanish Colonial mission built by Franciscan missionaries in 1630. From this charged space—between histories of resistance and renewal—my work continues the dialogue between Zuni tradition and contemporary art, between the ancestral and the urban.

Influenced by Warhol, Koons, and Picasso, I explore the tensions between beauty and struggle, visibility and erasure, survival and transformation. My works often turn toward Two-Spirit identity, spirit figures, and fragmented faces that move between worlds—symbols of both endurance and becoming.

These figures—abstract, geometric, and spiritually charged—serve as mirrors of endurance. They move between the sacred and the urban, between ancestral memory and the fractured landscapes of modern life. In their shifting forms, they embody both vulnerability and power, reminding us that identity is not fixed but continually remade.