Brent Watanabe is an artist combining a background in traditional materials and practices (drawing, sculpture) with emerging technologies (computer programming, electronics), exploring an artistic field still being defined and discovered. His work explores themes of human consumption and waste, our effect on nature and animals, as well as spirituality, suffering, and sentience. Using computers, computer programming, robotics, and video game engines, he utilizes technology as a medium to explore these themes in algorithmically controlled gallery and site-specific installations, online projects, and video game interventions.
Watanabe received the Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award in 2022, an unrestricted award of $25,000 are given annually to two Washington State artists of any discipline who are originating new work, experimenting with new ideas, taking risks, and pushing the boundaries of their fields. In 2025 Watanabe had his first solo retrospective exhibition at the Cornish Behnke Family Gallery, and completed a large-scale computer-controlled installation for the inaugural show at Cannonball Arts Center, a new 70,000 square foot arts center in Seattle, WA.
Brent has had a number of recent screenings, projects, and exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including those at Bumbershoot Arts and Music Festival (Seattle, 2024); the Shanzhong Tian Art Center, which was closed by local censorship authorities (Beijing, China, 2024); Digital Art Festival Taipei (Taiwan, 2023); OGR Torino (Italy, 2023); Bureau Europa (Netherlands, 2022); Centro Cultural Banco de Brasil (Brazil, 2022); a VR artist-in-residence with Meta/Facebook (2021); MassArt Art Museum, (Boston, 2020-22); NTT InterCommunication Center (Japan, 2019); and MAAT Museum, (Portugal, 2019).
While at MacDowell in 2011, Watanabe worked on a computer-controlled gallery installation to be presented as a solo show at 4CULTURE in Seattle in 2011. During his 2013 residency, he continued his exploration of computer-controlled gallery installations, focusing on (mis)communication between machines, animals, computer programming, and the surrounding environment itself. In 2016, Watanabe worked on a large-scale installation to be displayed at the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival in September, 2016. He also began work on an interactive virtual reality experience, using a developer edition of the Oculus Rift headset.
During his 2025 residency, Watanabe completed a suite of fifty pencil on Bristol board drawings, as well as worked on a mixed reality experience that will be presented in 2026/2027 as a large-scale museum installation. He also collaborated with MacDowell Fellow Leonardo Pirondi, co-creating music featured in Leonardo's film produced at MacDowell, currently being submitted to film festivals. He also presented during the 2025 season of MacDowell Downtown.
