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Matthew Angelo Harrison

He // Him // His

Multidisciplinary Artist

Detroit, Michigan

Matthew, a Black man with short dark locs and facial hair, stands in a room in between two sculptures. He wears a cream-colored t-shirt and black pants. His right hand is holding his left forearm.

Photo courtesy of SCAD.

“I aspire to work at the intersection of art and technology where the human being is centered. Working directly with technologies rooted in both mechanized and forced labor, manufacturing technologies for example, I continue to discover my identity and amplify what it means to be human in these contested spaces.”

Matthew Angelo Harrison is in many permanent collections, including Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; Galeries Lafayette Foundation, Paris; ICA Miami; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Denver Art Museum, CO; Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. He has enjoyed solo shows at Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Broad Art Museum; Atlanta Contemporary; and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. His work has been included in recent group exhibitions at MUDAM, Luxembourg; Cantor Arts Center, Palo Alto, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; Museion, Bolzano, Italy; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; Katonah Museum of Art, NY; Kunst Museum Winterthur, Switzerland; and Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, among others. Harrison has been awarded grants and fellowships by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; United States Artists, and Kresge Arts. He completed his BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012. Harrison lives and works in Detroit. He is represented by Jessica Silverman, San Francisco and Galerie Eva Presenhuber.

Donor -This award was generously supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

This artist page was last updated on: 03.11.2025

Visual Art
A translucent sculpture with white and blue detail and text sits on an aluminum stand in front of a white backdrop. The sculpture is comprised of mostly cubic forms.

Arise by Matthew Angelo Harrison, 2024. African wood sculpture, polyurethane resin, acrylic, and aluminum stand, 80 × 23 × 14 inches.

A sculpture rests on an aluminum stand in front of a plain white backdrop. The sculpture is composed of an African wood mask evoking the silhouette of a pregnant person's torso, suspended within a translucent cubic form. One side of the form is curved and convex, echoing the curve of the pregnant belly contained within.

Precious Belly by Matthew Angelo Harrison, 2023. African wood mask, polyurethane resin, acrylic, and aluminum stand, 40 × 12.5 × 8.5 inches.

A sculpture sits on an aluminum stand in front of a plain white backdrop. The sculpture is composed of a translucent resin form in which an African wood mask is suspended. There is a separate translucent cubic slab connected to one side of the form, rising slightly above the top.

Equipoise by Matthew Angelo Harrison, 2023. African wood mask, tinted polyurethane resin, acrylic, and aluminum stand, 63.7 × 15.75 × 10 inches.