Sherrill Roland is a sculptor and performance artist creating mixed-media art and installations that transform how audiences interact with the components of mass incarceration.
Roland’s Jumpsuit Project invites audiences to directly engage the artist in one-on-one conversations about the barriers experienced by people charged with crimes in the US. Alongside his large-scale sculptures, the work interrogates how society evaluates the emotional and mental repercussions of the carceral experience.
Born in 1984 in Asheville, North Carolina, Sherrill Roland studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2018) and earned his MFA and BFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (2017 and 2009). He has had solo exhibitions at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center, Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York (2019); Maria & Alberto de la Cruz Gallery, Georgetown University, Washington, DC (2019); Brooklyn Public Library (Central Library), Brooklyn, NY (2017); Los Angeles
Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles (2017): among others. His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA (2020); Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, MA (2020); Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA (2019); CAM Houston, Houston (2018); and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York,
NY (2017).
Roland is the recipient of the Creative Capital Award (2021); South Arts Southern Grand Prize & State Fellowship (2020); an Art for Justice Grantee (2020); and a Right of Return Fellow (2018) in addition to many other awards and recognitions. He has had fellowships and residencies at Fountainhead, Miami; Duke University, Durham, NC; Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA; among others. Roland’s work is in the permanent collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; Nasher Museum at Duke University, Durham, NC; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Warehouse, Dallas, TX; Fountainhead, Miami; and Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts +
Culture, Charlotte, NC.