Multimedia Monuments to Hip Hop’s Golden Age
This week we welcome Sherwin Banfield, a Queens-based mixed-media artist, curator and educator whose recent work explores journeys of identity and ancestry within his preferred subject matter, the human experience.
You may have seen his work in public spaces across the city or perhaps in Epicenter’s 2025 exhibition Music of Many Colours.
Banfield draws connections between his subjects’ personal stories and established culture, frequently imposing mythological and imaginative ideas as accessories within his sculptures.
Banfield conducts sculpture workshops throughout Queens, collaborating with learning institutions including Queens Museum, Queens Public Library and the NYC Public School system. He is also the Program Manager of ARTWorks, a professional development program for emerging BIPOC artists based in New York City that’s hosted by the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning.
He holds a BFA with honors from Parsons School of Design and studied figurative sculpture at the Art Students League of New York and painting at Studio Arts Central International in Florence. He is a recipient of the Augusta Savage Grant from the National Sculpture Society, and fellowships with the Harlem Sculpture Gardens, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Queens Botanical Garden. Other grants include awards from the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, the NYC Art in the Parks fund: the Alliance for Flushing Meadows Corona Park (FMCP). Other honors include, the Socrates Annual Emerging Artist Fellowship, the Fantasy Fund Fellowship at the Modern Art Foundry and the Art Students League of New York’s Model to Monument Fellowship.
His portrait busts and figurative works are expressions of mood meant to draw out the inner identity of his subjects. Accompanying each sculpted identity are accessories of light, sound and/or cultural references that hyperrealize this identity to complement the organic design of their facial, skull and anatomical structures. The goal is to create a projection of attitude, aura and lived experience within his sculpted figures.
Banfield’s recent projects build upon experimental ideas of encompassing various mixed materials with traditional sculpture, including lighting, sound and solar power that he refers to as Sustainable Sonic Sculpture. His recent public sculpture in downtown Brooklyn, “Sky’s the Limit in the County of Kings,” fused the musical identity and legacy of Brooklyn hip-hop legend The Notorious B.I.G. into a sonic monument. The intention is to combat future erasure of Black genius and legacy by reintroducing the multi-dimensional contributions of hip-hop legends, through a multi-sensory experience of monumentality.
See more of Banfield’s work on his website and Instagram.
