A NEW WORLD IS POSSIBLE, I CAN HEAR HER BREATHING
— Ben Sloat
16 May – 8 August 2026
"The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
— Arundhati Roy
Taiwanese-American artist Ben Sloat’s exhibition, A New World is Possible, I Can Hear Her Breathing bridges the animist cultures of Taiwan and Ireland through use of materials which transform from raw to cultural states. Employing the respective craft traditions of these countries, Sloat proposes a new kind of syncretism of the handmade: one that blends histories, provides for coalition, and points to new possibilities for the future.
Sloat will be working with two local Irish craftspeople, Brid Kivneen for traditional straw and Angela Nolan for willow, in the production of his installation in Gort. Through this collaboration, these organic materials and traditional craft are elevated from their raw states into hybrid contemporary cultural artefacts, giving both a personal voice and a broader societal perspective.
Ben Sloat often uses elements of the vernacular in his works; generating hybrid social meanings and reflecting the artist's multiculturall 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.
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 Project Space Pilipinas (Lucban), 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 founding director of the MFA in Visual Arts program at Clark University in Worcester, MA.
www.bensloat.com