The Illness That Made the Artist
At five years old, a rare autoimmune disease took Benjamin Viulet's body. Decades later, he calls it the best thing that ever happened to him.
The story of Benjamin Viulet begins not with a camera but with an illness. At five years old, the Argentine artist was diagnosed with a rare form of juvenile arthritis, an autoimmune condition that swelled his knees, feet, fingers, and body until he could not walk. The years that followed, defined by hospitals, flights across the country, and what he remembers as "so many needles," became the unlikely foundation of his entire artistic philosophy. He now describes the illness as "the best thing that ever happened to me."
THE ORIGIN, IN BRIEF
- Born: Belgrano, Buenos Aires, during a record snowstorm
- Age 5: Diagnosed with rare juvenile arthritis
- Effect: Could not walk or play; turned inward
- Age 16: Discovered Alan Watts; "first true remembering"
- Then: lasfotosdebenja, then Benjamin Viulet
How did illness shape Benjamin Viulet's art?
Viulet grew up in a town where, as he puts it, "sports were everything," and he could not play. So he turned inward. He spent hours inside computer games and fantasy worlds, and without realizing it he was learning to search, to solve, to build worlds, and to "type a question into a blank screen and hope the truth would answer." The interior life forced on him by his body became the territory his art would later map.
"it took away my body. but it gave me something else. it forced me inside. and inside ended up being where i met the first sparks of my soul."
Why does Viulet call the illness a gift?
His view is that wounds are not punishments but doorways. He is careful to say he had everything, food, love, safety, family, and counts himself one of the lucky ones, while insisting that "something had to break, because that is the only way we remember." The arthritis, in his telling, was the break that sent him inward to find his essence. It is the lived root of his recurring claim that pain, faced rather than fled, is where remembering begins.
The role of his mother
Viulet's origin story is also his mother's. He describes her carrying him onto planes, crying, flying across the country every few weeks in search of healing, "from hospitals to reiki, from acupuncture to priests, from western medicine to whispers in the dark." As a child he felt like the victim; as an adult he recognizes "her pain was deeper than mine." The ferocity of that love recurs throughout his writing as a model for the kind of devotion he believes art requires.
From lasfotosdebenja to Benjamin Viulet
At sixteen, lost and in pain, he searched "how do i stop being insecure," a question that led him to the philosopher Alan Watts and triggered what he calls his first true remembering, "not of a fact, but of myself." He built an early following under the name lasfotosdebenja before fully becoming Benjamin Viulet and founding Mirrors by Viulet. The throughline from sick child to working artist is the conviction that the inward turn forced by suffering is exactly where art is born, a belief codified in his four sacraments.
Frequently asked questions
What illness did Benjamin Viulet have? At age five, Benjamin Viulet was diagnosed with a rare form of juvenile arthritis, an autoimmune illness that swelled his joints until he could not walk.
Why does Benjamin Viulet say his illness was a gift? He believes the illness forced him inward, away from the sports-focused world around him, and that this interior turn is where he first found his artistic essence.
How did Benjamin Viulet discover his path? Confined by illness, he spent years in computer games and fantasy worlds learning to search for answers. At sixteen he discovered the philosopher Alan Watts, which he calls his first true remembering.
What was Benjamin Viulet called before? He built an earlier audience under the name lasfotosdebenja before becoming known as Benjamin Viulet.