This 10-year-old artist with autism is a rising NFT star

The works of a 10-year-old boy with autism are fea­tured along­side those of trail­blaz­ing cryp­to artists from the Philip­pines and Sin­ga­pore in a cryp­to art exhi­bi­tion hap­pen­ing this month. Sevi Agre­ga­do is the only kid in the ros­ter of artists that includes not­ed illus­tra­tor and cryp­to entre­pre­neur Luis Bue­naven­tu­ra, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, singer and visu­al artist Ray­mond Laucheng­co, graph­ic design­er and illus­tra­tor AJ Dimaru­cot, and painter co-founder of Cryp­toartPh Jopet Arias. 

Sevi is show­cas­ing four of his paint­ings at Gale­ria Paloma’s exhi­bi­tion titled “1/1” (read: one of one) to be held at Pow­er Plant Mall in Rock­well, Makati begin­ning Sep­tem­ber 30 to Octo­ber 4, and online on NFT art plat­form Foun­da­tion start­ing Sep­tem­ber 23. The event is mount­ed in con­junc­tion with the largest region­al cryp­to art event, Cryp­to Art Week Asia.

Sevi’s growth in the art scene has been noth­ing short of remark­able. Since he start­ed paint­ing five years ago, his works have been fea­tured in sev­er­al onsite and online shows. The boy had his first vir­tu­al exhib­it at Art Fair Philip­pines last year. His NFTs were fea­tured in phys­i­cal gal­leries in Sin­ga­pore and Chica­go for Cryp­to Art Week Asia 2021 and were also dis­played at Times Square in New York last June for NFT.NYC. His tal­ent also got the atten­tion of Vogue Sin­ga­pore and The Straits Times Sin­ga­pore. Sevi, the coun­try’s first and youngest known cryp­to artist, has sold sev­er­al of his phys­i­cal paint­ings, com­mis­sioned works, and NFTs on the metaverse. 

“These vir­tu­al events have been real­ly amaz­ing for Sevi’s growth because we nev­er thought that his art would reach all over the world,” says Sevi’s moth­er, April, who still can’t quite believe the extent of her son’s accom­plish­ments. To think that eight years ago, she and her hus­band, John­cy, didn’t know what the future holds for their lit­tle boy.

Sevi, the sec­ond among four chil­dren, was diag­nosed with autism when he was two years old. “Doc, how come Sevi is not talk­ing so much yet?” April remem­bers ask­ing the family’s pedi­a­tri­cian. In that check­up, the doc­tor iden­ti­fied pos­si­ble signs of devel­op­men­tal delay and rec­om­mend­ed they con­sult a devel­op­men­tal pedi­a­tri­cian for fur­ther assessment.

The Agre­ga­dos heed­ed the doctor’s advice and ini­tial find­ings showed Sevi has a speech dis­or­der. But after going through a com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment, they found the boy’s con­di­tion to be more than a sim­ple devel­op­men­tal delay. “The doc­tor set a box of tis­sues beside me, which was an indi­ca­tion na the news is not great,” recalls April. 

Aside from hav­ing glob­al devel­op­men­tal delay or GDD (mean­ing, he shows delays across sev­er­al areas of devel­op­ment), Sevi is also diag­nosed to have autism (a devel­op­men­tal dis­or­der affect­ing phys­i­cal, social, and lan­guage skills).

“It was tough for me and my hus­band in the begin­ning,” April tells ANCX. Because she was tak­ing med­i­cine for ges­ta­tion­al dia­betes, all sorts of ques­tions crossed her mind: “Did I do some­thing that caused it? Was it some­thing I took? Did I acci­den­tal­ly inhale some­thing? Did I not take care of myself enough?”

“There was a lot of that guilt in the begin­ning,” she says. “There was sadness.”

But after find­ing out their son’s con­di­tion, the Agre­ga­dos did not waste time in pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary inter­ven­tions. At age two, Sevi start­ed to go to ther­a­py, and at age five, they enrolled him to art class­es offered at the ther­a­py cen­ter. “We also enrolled him in gym­nas­tics and foot­ball and his teach­ers were actu­al­ly very hap­py with his per­for­mance. But it was only art that Sevi want­ed to con­tin­ue,” says April. 

In our inter­view, Sevi tells us he likes art because “it’s fun” and “you can make anything.”

“The way I see it, art is some­thing that a per­son with neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties can do with­out any expec­ta­tions as to the out­come. Unlike for speech or even any sub­ject in school, there’s an expect­ed out­come or expect­ed answer. With art, if you think about it, you can do what­ev­er you want. And it’s your way of express­ing your­self,” says April.

Sevi’s very first art piece depict­ed an image of a tree in a field. At that time, he was very much fas­ci­nat­ed with Angry Birds and insist­ed on putting a red angry bird on the paint­ing. “We’re like, ‘okay, it’s cute,’” recalls April, smil­ing. But as weeks pro­gressed, John­cy and April were pleas­ant­ly sur­prised with the changes in their son’s works. They thought, “Wow may poten­tial siya.”

Nor­mal­ly, Sevi would paint what­ev­er inter­ests him at a giv­en moment—whether it’s an image from a TV show he watched, a game on his gad­get, a top­ic that caught his fan­cy at school. “There was one time he was very much into this show on Net­flix called ‘Grizzy and the Lem­ings’ and he want­ed to paint a bear,” says April. “There was one time they were talk­ing about smores in class and he want­ed to make smores and paint smores.”

Sevi’s cre­ative process starts off with a sim­ple idea—say, an ani­mal. April will look for ref­er­ence mate­ri­als and Sevi will make his own spin on the sub­ject. “He’s doing a lot of col­or­ful pieces late­ly, and they’re usu­al­ly set against a dark back­ground,” April observes. Exam­ples include the piece  shown on the Times Square bill­board which fea­tured the image of a lion, and his fea­tured works in the Gale­ria Palo­ma event this month.

Sevi says he likes to paint all sorts of stuff “every­thing and anything—sea crea­tures and non­liv­ing things.” At the time of our inter­view, he tells us he would like to paint a zebra. His pri­ma­ry medi­um is acrylic on canvas.

The young artist attends two-hour art ther­a­py ses­sions in a gallery in Kapi­tolyo, Pasig once a week. Typ­i­cal­ly, he’s able to fin­ish a piece in one ses­sion. But some­times he does com­pli­cat­ed pieces that take him about two or three ses­sions to fin­ish. “If it’s a sub­ject that he real­ly likes, or he’s very excit­ed about, he can do it in an hour and a half or less, kasi hyper­fo­cused siya e,” says April. 

His teach­ers let Sevi do his thing and pro­vide guid­ance and reminders as need­ed. They would tell him, for exam­ple, not to make the can­vas too wet or not to use too much paint. “Sevi’s teach­ers are very proud of him, kasi siya tala­ga ang guma­gawa ng strokes. Ayaw ni Sevi na some­body else is touch­ing the can­vas,” shares April. “After the teacher has demon­strat­ed one or two strokes, sasabi­hin ni Sevi, ‘Okay, let me try.’ Unlike oth­ers na kailan­gan pa hawakan ang hand, ayaw ni Sevi na hahawakan siya. He’s very quick to do that.”

Sevi’s teach­ers are hap­py the Agre­ga­dos start­ed their son ear­ly in the arts. At the moment, he still works with ref­er­ence mate­ri­als but they pre­dict the boy will soon be able to work from his own imag­i­na­tion. His cre­ative devel­op­ment, they say, has been remarkable.

But for April, it’s just a bonus that Sevi has been pro­duc­ing beau­ti­ful art. The biggest ben­e­fit, she says, is that art has allowed Sevi to express him­self and devel­op neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal­ly. “He’s receiv­ing instruc­tions from some­body who’s guid­ing him and because of that, he has to under­stand the instruc­tions and trans­late them onto the can­vas. If he has ques­tions or clar­i­fi­ca­tions, he has to be able to express that to the instruc­tor. So real­ly paint­ing has improved him devel­op­men­tal­ly, aside from artis­ti­cal­ly,” she says. “We real­ly feel that because of art, Sevi has improved his com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, his con­cen­tra­tion. He’s able to sit still for two hours—that’s hard even for ordi­nary peo­ple like us. Art real­ly cat­a­pult­ed his development.”

April says hav­ing a younger sib­ling has also great­ly helped Sevi. Because he has GDD, he’s two years delayed in terms of his devel­op­ment, and so he and his sev­en-year-old sis­ter, Lexi, prac­ti­cal­ly grew up and devel­oped their skills and capa­bil­i­ties at the same time.

With Sevi, it’s been a col­or­ful 10 years for the Agre­ga­dos. April admits sup­port­ing a child who’s dif­fer­ent­ly-abled has been quite chal­leng­ing. “Even if Sevi did­n’t have autism, it’s tough to be a par­ent on Twitter—you know, shar­ing your kid’s sto­ry, open­ing your life up to strangers,” she admits. “And as the cura­tor and as the voice of the kid, it’s a lot of respon­si­bil­i­ty, and also a lot of appre­hen­sion and anx­i­ety on our part because you’re in a space where there are so many estab­lished artists.”

In the begin­ning, she admits they want­ed to step back because there’s a finan­cial aspect to Sevi being an artist. “Some are say­ing it’s creepy for par­ents to be shar­ing and sell­ing their kids’ work,” she says. But April says they only have their child’s best inter­ests at heart. “Thank­ful­ly we didn’t need to touch the funds that we’ve been able to earn from the sales of his work. But we are com­fort­able with the knowl­edge na kung kailan­gan, there’s that fund that we can use for him. Because he’ll need ther­a­py for a very long time.”

April says their biggest take­away from this jour­ney is to take your doctor’s advice and be open to the pos­si­bil­i­ties of how art or any oth­er activ­i­ty can help your child. “Had I not heed­ed the pediatrician’s advice to seek fur­ther help, we would­n’t have caught the diag­no­sis ear­ly on and we wouldn’t have got­ten the help that Sevi need­ed,” she says. “I have heard sto­ries of par­ents being in denial that they delay hav­ing the child go through ther­a­py. Then by the time they start, mas matan­da na ang child and already set in his ways, so it’s hard­er to help him. Sayang ang time.”

April also advis­es par­ents to expose their chil­dren to dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties so they can dis­cov­er and devel­op their full poten­tial. As for Sevi, he has a pret­ty straight­for­ward advice to kids who would like to become artists like him: “Just do it!”

Pho­tos cour­tesy of April Agregado