Sherrill Roland

Asheville, North Carolina, United States, 1984

            Sherrill Roland has emerged over the past decade as a powerful voice in contemporary art, using his interdisciplinary practice to confront—with profound sensitivity—the complexities of innocence, identity, and the impact of the U.S. judicial system. Roland grew up in an environment that shaped him from an early age: he lost his father at the age of four, a man whose life within the prison system became a distant echo until Roland, as an adult, faced his own experience with the justice system. He studied at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he earned a BFA in Design in 2009 and an MFA in Studio Art in 2017, after a forced hiatus due to an unjust conviction in 2013 that led to a ten-month incarceration, from which he was exonerated in 2015. This experience transformed his art into a vehicle for reflection and resistance, shedding light on the invisible scars of incarceration.

            In the exhibition Hindsight Bias, presented at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York from January to March 2022, he exhibited his work Smile and the World Smiles with You in Return. This piece, created with a technique that combines etched acrylic, Kool-Aid, acrylic medium, and epoxy resin, measures 48 x 24 x 2 1/4 inches and is part of his Thirsties series. In it, Roland uses Kool-Aid—a material emblematic of his time in prison, where it was a common beverage—to evoke both childhood nostalgia and the despair of confinement, represented through abstract forms that recall the distorted smiles of the Kool-Aid characters. The work, with its vibrant palette and resinous texture, not only engages with popular culture but also challenges viewers to consider the invisibility of carceral experiences, a recurring theme in his work that seeks to bring repressed emotions and the human costs of the justice system to light.

            Roland’s use of mixed techniques—such as etched acrylic and unconventional materials like Kool-Aid—transforms these elements into an artistic language rich in vulnerability and social critique. Since 2016, with his project The Jumpsuit Project, in which he wears an orange jumpsuit to spark conversations about mass incarceration, Roland has explored how art can be a space for healing and dialogue. His work—which spans sculpture, installations, and performance—not only denounces the failures of a judicial system that left its mark on him but also offers a poetic testimony to human resilience, inviting reflection on how community and empathy can mend the fractures of a deeply unequal society.