Victor Langlois is 18, and in only 7 years has gone from a runaway youth to a millionaire, even before his art sold in auction at Christie’s for $2.16 million.
Langlois, who goes by FEWOCiOUS online, sold five lots of art on Wednesday, July 21. Each lot included a physical painting, a video artwork sold as an NFT, and a collection of smaller paintings, doodles, sketches and journal entries. The collections each represent one year of Langlois’ life from ages 14-18, including his explorations of his gender identity, his transition, and his relocation from Las Vegas to Seattle.
According to Christie’s, Victor Langlois is the youngest artist to have work sold through the prestigious auction house. He got into digital art during the pandemic, when he wasn’t allowed to have paint. In 2020, he began selling his colorful, surrealist art on the NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway, which allows sellers to guarantee that buyers are purchasing a one-of-a-kind digital token embedded in their art. He sold a painting for $25,000 in November. In March, he sold one for $550,000. In less than a year, including the Christie’s auction, he has earned just shy of $18 million selling digital art.
“Thank you so much for believing in me and my journey. It means the world,” said Langlois, openly crying in an Instagram video after the Wednesday auction. “I put my everything into this, and I was so nervous to come out and to tell everyone who I am.”
Langlois was raised by his immigrant grandmother after running away from an abusive home life at 12. She loved him, he said, but never supported his pursuit of art.
“I think she struggled so much that she just wanted security,” Langlois told Christie’s. “To see me wanting to pursue art, she was like, ‘What? Be a lawyer.’ Which I understand. But it hurt when she would say, ‘Your art is ugly and that’s why you can’t do it.’”
Image: Leonard Zhukovsky / Shutterstock.com