ABOUT
BIO.
Benjamin Charles was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2004. He is completing BA degrees in Fine Arts and Political Science at The George Washington University and will enter The George Washington University Law School in fall 2026.
Charles’s work has been presented in exhibitions including Emerging Perspectives, The Delaplaine Arts Center, Frederick, Maryland (2025); Vivid Moments, New York Academy of Art, New York (2024); Faces and Figure, Site:Brooklyn Gallery, New York (2024); figure, Touchstone Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2024); next NEXT_, The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, Washington, D.C. (2023); Wiener Werkstätte: Nature to Abstraction, The George Washington University Textile Museum, Washington, D.C. (2023); Is It Me?, The Trolley Barn Gallery, Poughkeepsie, New York (2023); and Being Seen, The Artists Gallery (TAG), Frederick, Maryland (2023).
Charles is the co-founder of Conflicted Art, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and exhibiting artwork addressing war and contemporary conflict. He has organized and co-curated the traveling exhibition We Know Who They Are… (WKWTA), presented at Gallery 102, Washington, D.C. (2024); The Evelyn Burrow Museum, Cullman, Alabama (2025); and forthcoming at The Peale, Baltimore, Maryland (2026).
He has participated in residencies at the New York Academy of Art (2024) and the Rural Residency for Contemporary Arts, Brescia, Italy (2023), and has received competitive academic and artistic fellowships and awards in support of his research and practice.
Charles’s work and projects have been featured in publications by Voice of America, the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and in Artsted’s 99 Future Blue-Chip Artists (2023).
THE PAINTINGS.
Benjamin Charles is a Washington, D.C.–based artist whose work spans painting and multisensory installation. His practice examines how contemporary societies visualize tragedy, war, and the engineered systems that sustain them, focusing on the ways power, technology, and belief shape modern aesthetics of devotion and destruction. Working with industrial house paints, commercial color systems, and modular surfaces, Cunningham reimagines the altarpiece as a recurring formal reference—not for its religious content, but for its capacity to structure attention and contemplation in the face of complex imagery.
Drawing on imagery from militarized architectures, autonomous systems, machine vision, and mediated catastrophe, his large-scale, altarpiece-like paintings transform infrastructural networks and moments of rupture into objects of heightened attention. Early works drew from American commercial graphics, Catholic iconography, and queer narrative, while more recent paintings integrate fiber-optic systems and war technologies to consider how violence is designed, aestheticized, and made legible.
Charles approaches war and disaster not as isolated events but as environments—networks of machinery, logistics, and design that reveal broader cultural values. His installations often incorporate scent, sound, and spatial intervention to unsettle the boundaries between ritual, spectacle, and crisis. Across his work, catastrophic forms appear with deliberate clarity, proposing that the aesthetics of modern conflict carry a devotional charge and tracing the uneasy relationship between faith, risk, and the built environments that define the present.
CURRICULUM VITAE.
[Education]
2029 The George Washington University Law School — Doctor of Law (JD)
2026 The George Washington University — Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts
2026 The George Washington University — Bachelor of Arts in Political Science
[Exhibitions]
2025 The Delaplaine Arts Center “Emerging Perspectives” Frederick, MD. USA
2024 New York Academy of Art “Vivid Moments” New York, NY. USA
2024 Site:Brooklyn Gallery “Faces and Figure Virtual Exhibition” New York, NY. USA
2024 Touchstone Gallery “figure” Washington, D.C. USA
2023 The Corcoran School of Art and Design “From Gold to Golden” Washington, D.C. USA
2023 The Corcoran School of Art and Design “next NEXT_” Washington, D.C. USA
2023 The George Washington University Textile Museum “Wiener Werkstätte: Nature to Abstraction” Washington, D.C. USA
2023 The Trolley Barn Gallery “Is It Me?” Poughkeepsie, NY. USA
2023 The Artists Gallery (TAG) “Being Seen” Frederick, MD. USA
2022 HMVC Gallery “2022 Virtual Exhibition Show” New York City, NY. USA
2022 Montgomery County Community College Fine Arts Gallery “Touch the Future” Blue Bell, PA. USA
2022 Montgomery County Community College Pottstown Gallery “Tri-County Art Exhibition” Pottstown, PA. USA
[Curatorial Work]
2026 The Peale Museum, “We Know Who They Are… (WKWTA)” Baltimore, MD. USA
2026 The Gateway Regional Arts Center, “We Know Who They Are… (WKWTA)” Mount Sterling, KY. USA
2025 The Evelyn Burrow Museum, “We Know Who They Are… (WKWTA)” Cullman, AL. USA
2024 Gallery 102 at The George Washington University “We Know Who They Are… (WKWTA)” Washington, DC. USA
[Residencies and Awards]
2024 Public Service Grant Commission, The Nashman Center of Civic Engagement and Public Service, Washington, DC.
2024 Luther Rice Undergraduate Fellowship, The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, Washington, DC.
2024 Summer Undergraduate Residency Program, New York Academy of Art, New York City, NY.
2023 International Artist Residency, Rural Residency for Contemporary Arts, Brescia, Italy
2022 Finalist in the 7th Edition of the Boynes International Emerging Artist Award
[Publications]
2024 Focus Ukraine Blog—Kennan Institute—Woodrow Wilson Center, “Art Defending the Right of Ukrainians…,” Blaire A. Ruble
2024 Voice of America, “An American student organized an exhibition…,” Iryna Shynkarenko
2024 Conflicted Art, “We Know Who They Are: Narratives and Artwork from the Invasion of Ukraine”
2023 Artsted, “99 Future Blue-Chip Artists, 2o23 Edition,” Artsted Future Blue-Chip Artist Award
2022 Chantal Boynes, “Artist Interview,” Boynes International Emerging Artist Award
2021 Le Jardin, “A Walk Through the Gilded Gardens”