Sean Connelly

Photograph by Sancia Miala Shiba Nash.

Born and raised in Honolulu, Sean Connelly is an artist and building practitioner working collaboratively across sculpture, architecture, film, and cartography. Connelly’s practice engages deeply with grassroots interventions and supports Native liberation, food sovereignty, land justice, and cultural resurgence centering ‘āina (Land / That Which Feeds).

As founding director of After Oceanic Built Environments Lab and the nonprofit Hawai‘i Nonlinear, Connelly actively cultivates ancestral knowledge, ecological insight, and social justice to transform built environments into living archives of intergenerational healing. Collaborating closely with cultural bearers, creative practitioners, and Indigenous experts across Pae ‘Āina Hawai‘i (Hawaiian Islands), Connelly’s work contributes to a grassroots community of care, actively shaping liberated oceanic futures. He is the 2025 Artist-in-Residence at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU.

I am honored to join the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU as Artist-in-Residence, building on my work that engages Pacific Islander American perspectives within the evolving cultural currents of contemporary urban life in Hawai‘i and the United States. Born, raised, and growing up in Honolulu, I’ve developed an alternative art and architecture practice shaped by oceanic connections, intergenerational family histories, and the complex dynamics that emerge where grassroots activism meets global change. My artistic and activist-driven design approach weaves sculpture, architecture, film, and cartography together to examine spatial justice, food sovereignty, and our collective responsibilities to ‘āina—the built environments that feed us. During this residency, I look forward to sharing my ongoing inquiries with NYU’s diverse student body, faculty, and broader communities. I hope to foster conversations that spark fresh thinking about place, identity, and our entanglements in Hawai‘i and across Oceania. I am thankful for this opportunity to expand upon new work about how Hawai‘i and Oceanic perspectives might encourage us to rethink the history and future of how we imagine, care for, and shape our environment.

Sean Connelly, Artist-in-Residence

A detailed photograph of Connelly's sculptures, and the lashings that held the components together.

The carved wooden sculptures Connelly created for 20 Cooper Square Gallery are seated in a fiberglass outrigger canoe and designed to be fastened with cord and notches alone. These close-up views reveal the discipline underlying the rigorous work of design, learning, and making, fostering a steady commitment to the responsibilities inherent in working on land, in community, and across boundaries. Image courtesy the artist.

A black and white still from Sean Connelly’s video work Spheric Oceania (2024), on view at The Met’s Arts of Oceania Gallery. It features a 3D rendering of the Earth. Courtesy of Sean Connelly.

A still image from Connelly’s moving image work Spheric Oceania—on permanent view at The MET—offers an alternative mapping of Oceania as a cosmic container of ancestral connection. The work utilizes GIS data and architectural modeling to integrate oral histories, ocean surface data, and the oceanic dispersal of food plants such as sweet potato and taro. Image courtesy the artist.

A photograph of the artwork Hale Pi‘o by artist Sean Connelly.

Demonstrating the importance of creativity and imagination in everyday life, Connelly’s grassroots social practice, After Oceanic, actively supports communities of ʻāina through innovative design and architecture. In this image, the structure Hale Piʻo embodies the symbiotic relationship between people and ʻāina, designed by After Oceanic Built Environments Lab and Leong Leong Architecture. Image courtesy kekahi wahi.

The Asian/Pacific/American Institute is proud and delighted to welcome Sean Connelly as Artist-in-Residence for 2025. Based in Hawaiʻi, Connelly has developed a decolonial vision and practice that spans across the Pacific and Oceania, exploring connections between the built environment, waterways and ocean spaces, and grassroots activism for political justice. Connelly will make an invaluable contribution to our programming initiative, “A/P/A Prospects,” helping us to understand new and alternate ways in which Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in New York, and other spaces of diaspora, relate to and are responsible for the places they inhabit, visit, and build. We are excited to learn from Connelly’s multimodal and interdisciplinary approach to design for reimagining identity, family, and community in relation to the profound social, political, and environmental challenges facing our communities.

Crystal Parikh, Director

From Hawaiʻi to Palestine: Sean Connelly, Nadine Fattaleh, Nour Joudah, and Brandy Nālani McDougall
Friday, May 2, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
20 Cooper Square, third floor

A/P/A at The Met: Celebrate the New Michael C. Rockefeller Wing
Saturday, May 31, 12:00-5:00 p.m.
The Met, 1000 Fifth Avenue

Opening for Hawai‘i is not the United States, but it is your Future
Wednesday, October 29, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
20 Cooper Square, first floor gallery
Details

Hawai‘i is not the United States, but it is your Future
20 Cooper Square, first floor gallery
On view: October 30-December 12, 2025
Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday, 12:00-6:00 p.m.

Vā Moana and Hawai‘i Futures
Thursday, November 13, 2025, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
20 Cooper Square, third floor
Details

Closing Artist Talk for Hawai‘i is not the United States, but it is your Future
Wednesday, December 3, 2025, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
20 Cooper Square, room 101
Details

Sean Connelly

About the Artist

Artist’s Statement

Message from A/P/A

Programs & Exhibition

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