Biography

Christopher Joshua Benton is a socially engaged artist based in the UAE, working in installation, sculpture, and film. His practice centres on themes of power, labour, and diaspora, often using found objects to address postcolonial and socioeconomic disparities. Benton collaborates with craftspeople, scientists, academics, and architects to imagine new ways of living and create new sites of knowledge production. Notable exhibitions include The World Was My Garden, Abu Dhabi Art (2021), and LLC, presented at the Fikra Graphic Design Biennial (2019). His projects frequently use metaphors, such as the palm tree, to explore themes of migration and labour economies. Benton's work has been featured internationally in locations including New York, Tokyo, Venice, and across the Emirates. Benton received the Black Visionaries grant from Meta & Brooklyn Museum (2022) and the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in Visual Arts from MIT, Cambridge, MA (2022), as well as fellowships from the Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation, Abu Dhabi. He holds a BA in English from the University of Georgia (2011) and an MSc in Art, Culture, and Technology from MIT (2023).