About
FICTIONALISED AUTOBIOGRAPHY WITH A TRAGIC SENSE OF HUMOUR
About
Becalelis
Born in London in 1968, I was brought up between the UK, where my mother is from, and Morocco, where my Jewish father is from, with annual visits to India also a significant influence. My childhood was spent amongst artists from different disciplines and spiritual traditions of different cultures. Settling in the UK at 14, I left school at 15, producing zines, T-shirts and music events.
Sculpture
At 20, I studied sculpture at Norwich School of Art under Brazilian artist Anna Maria Pacheco. After art school, I trained as a traditional stone carver with renowned master John Roberts, earning my living carving headstones and taking on commissions.
Animation
In my 30s, switching from stone to animation, I completed an MA at the Royal College of Art (2001), leading to a career making award-winning films, teaching, running animation departments (LCC and Plymouth College of Art) and producing community media projects.
Community
Amongst a number of large-scale community arts projects, I produced Reimagine Your Town (2015), a community mapping project that was ahead of its time in its use of VR and game engines, enabling residents of a town to create a psychogeography that could be applied to town planning.
PhD
The project Reimagine Your Town led to an AHRC-funded PhD. I received my doctorate in 2024 for my thesis, [Mapping a lived experience in landscape: An artist’s analysis of GPS and GIS data], applying Henri Bergson’s theories of perception to a method of mapping that identifies portals in space and time.
Existential Sitcom
A nervous breakdown followed, then a diagnosis of bipolar disorder — in retrospect, both were the liberating daemon.
For the sake of sanity, I resolved to return without compromise to being a full-time artist.My exodus from academia gave way to a number of projects, one being the development of my alter ego, Existential Sitcom — a way to engage with the society of the spectacle and face the challenge of earning a living as an artist.
Existential Sitcom is a mystic fool.The best comedy is serious — a way of facing the absurdity of being alive, making work, and trying to earn a living from it without selling out.
This fool gives me permission to engage with things I feel too embarrassed to share — a way of engaging wholeheartedly with the existential crisis.
The mystic is the healer — engaging with the spiritual dimension of healing, questioning the labels of mental health, and exploring, unapologetically, the sanity of madness.
Meet Existential Sitcom on Instagram Reels →
The mystic knows that the material world is a flawed perception. Blessed are the cracks. I can believe wholeheartedly in angels and still feel completely abandoned by them.
Exodus
In July 2026, returning to a mulberry tree, the silkworm dragon revealed its head, its golden thread wrapped around the branches. From the dragon’s breath came the instruction to free my PhD from academia’s bookshelves and animate the research in artworks instead.
Sales of my work provide independence and time to create the work.