ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Ben Roosevelt is a Honolulu-based artist whose sculptural and installation practice has been shown in museums and contemporary art spaces across the United States and internationally. His work has appeared in exhibitions at the High Museum of Art, MOCA GA, and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, as well as TULCA in Ireland and the Putting Lot in New York. The artist is participating in an upcoming exhibition, Abstract Mind, at CICA Museum, Korea (2026).

Roosevelt’s practice has been recognized with residencies at HMK in the Netherlands and the Hambidge Center for the Arts in Georgia, along with awards from the Forward Arts Foundation and the Arts Council of Ireland. His work and projects have been featured in New American Paintings, The Village Voice, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Circa Art Magazine, and The Irish Times, among other publications. He holds an MFA from the National University of Ireland, Galway, an MTS from Vanderbilt University, and a BA in Religion from the University of the South, Sewanee.

STATEMENT

My artwork tends to use things that circulate through my everyday life in Hawai‘i: slippers, grocery bags, takeout containers, cardboard Amazon boxes——habits and experiences, too. I like to collect, alter, and rearrange. Some materials I document in drawings; others I cut, paint, or reframe until they take on a different kind of weight. I’m attracted to objects and actions that aren’t meant to last, things that hold, carry, or pass through, but that still leave a trace.

I get lost in the layers of Honolulu, of neighborhoods and communities, of the humor and pressures of local life. My work is experimental and unsure. I work toward forms that feel mixed up and unstable, and I present artworks that give me pause or pose a problem. I feel a sense of truth when it’s hard to separate celebration from criticism.

I’m a haole, a southerner from Appalachia, and a contemporary person alienated from a clear sense of ancestral origin or roots, which might be why contradictions feel like belonging to me.

I’m fascinated by Arte Povera and Tropicália. Andy Warhol’s influence is behind my work, too, with his way of turning the everyday into something sharp, strange, or beautiful.

I debuted this new website in 2025. From March to June 2026, Bright Side is in a show called Hand, Material, Mind at Hambidge Hive in Atlanta, and in April 2026, Go Buy is in another a show called Abstract Mind at CICA Museum in Korea.