Sean Connelly

Dr. Sean Connelly (b. 1984, Honolulu; Kanaka Hawaiʻi / Pacific Islander American / Ilocano) is an artist and spatial practitioner who works across sculpture, architecture, film, and experimental cartography in support of Native liberation, land justice, and cultural resurgence in Hawaiʻi and Oceania. He holds a Doctorate of Architecture from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and a Master in Design Studies from Harvard GSD, directs the After Oceanic Built Environments Lab, and teaches at Columbia GSAPP.

Approach. Connelly describes his practice as “Indigenous architectural cartography,” holding land, water, architecture, and power in a single frame. His structures rely on lashing and compression — holding form through balance rather than fixed joinery — a logic the niu itself enacts.

Selected works & recognition. Connelly’s work was included in the 2026 Whitney Biennial and the 2024 Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial. Spheric Oceania (2016; adapted 2024) is on permanent view in The Met’s reinstalled Arts of Oceania galleries, and with Leong Leong he created Hālau Kūkulu Hawaiʻi for Making Home — Smithsonian Design Triennial at Cooper Hewitt (2024). In 2025 he was Artist-in-Residence at NYU’s A/P/A Institute, presenting his first NYC solo, Hawaiʻi is not the United States, but it is your Future.

Dive deeper
Website
Hawaiʻi Futures project
The Met essay: Mapping Oceania
NYU A/P/A residency
Watch on Vimeo