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Transgender teenager Victor Langlois first made headlines in June 2021 after his physical artwork and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, netted $2.16 million at famed New York City auction house Christie’s. The collection, titled “Hello, i’m Victor (FEWOCiOUS) and This Is My Life,” explored his childhood and gender transition.
An NFT is a blockchain-powered unit of data that authenticates ownership of digital objects — images, videos and songs, for example.
Since that headline-grabbing Christie’s sale, Langlois, 19, has garnered even more attention — and sales — in the lucrative world of NFT art. In April, Langlois, who is also known as FEWOCiOUS, sold nearly $20 million of his digital artwork within 24 hours, according to Fortune, which reported that it was the third-largest sale in the history of the NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway.
“It’s been hard for me to process, to be honest,” Langlois told Fortune at the time, adding that he’s going to use the money to invest in his art business and keep creating. “The dream isn’t to relax and do nothing, the dream is to draw.”
“Hello, i’m Victor (FEWOCiOUS) and This Is My Life” represented the Langlois’ life from ages 14 to 18, when he was removed from an abusive household and began living with his grandparents in Las Vegas. However, he has described living with his grandparents as being just as tumultuous.
“I thought I would be safe, but they were just as mean,” he told Esquire in an interview in June 2021. He was also afraid, he told the magazine, to come out as transgender to his religious family members.
Around the same time, he told Christie’s that his Latina grandmother struggled to understand his pursuit for the arts.
“I think she struggled so much that she just wanted security,” he said. “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.’”
Still, that didn’t stop Langlois from pursuing his dreams. Langlois started drawing art on his iPad because he wasn’t allowed to paint, he told the cryptocurrency site Decrypt.
Since his Christie’s sale, Langlois has made about $50 million from his artwork, according to Fortune.
