Ben Sloat often uses elements of the vernacular in his works; generating hybrid social meanings and reflecting the artist's multiracial Taiwanese-American background. Working across mediums, the projects frequently find themselves considering the capacity of iconography, image, or light based material, in a wide and inclusive definition of the "photographic". Cultural vocabulary is commonly used as a medium in the work, oscillating between an intimately personal voice and a larger societal one.
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Born and raised in New York City, Ben Sloat earned degrees from UC Berkeley and SMFA/Tufts. His work has been shown in venues such as the Havana Biennial (Matanzas), Radium Art Center (Busan), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Dublin City Gallery/The Hugh Lane (Dublin), Peabody Essex Museum (Salem), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond), and the Queens Museum. Solo exhibitions include those at Das Klohauschen (Munich), Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston); Coop Gallery (Nashville), Galerie Laroche/Joncas (Montreal), Gallery 126 (Galway), Front Gallery (Oakland), and the American Cultural Center (Taipei).
He is the director of the MFA in Visual Arts program at Clark University in Worcester, MA.
image info: "Pulse Density - Richmond", projection installation at VMFA, Richmond, VA