Haines‘ works investigate the life of objects, emphasizing the constructed nature of history. Many works explore altered conventions of portraiture, through figures and objects pictured against cinematic backdrops or in otherworldly scenes. His paintings and installations employ various techniques and materials to suggest the passage of time and volatility, set within displaced domestic structures, critiquing the unbalanced systems we take for granted and overlook. Comets race across the skies of bucolic landscapes, Roman portrait busts stand in for the corrupting force of unchecked power. Candles appear to signal that time is running out, floating before cloaked figures whose identities remain circumspect. Recent works consider themes such as climate change and systemic housing insecurity before and during the pandemic, exploring the illusionistic systems meriting human rights like shelter, food, and healthcare to the privileged few.

Eben Haines was born in Boston, MA in 1990, and he received his BFA with honors from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2013. Haines was a recipient of the 2018 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in Drawing, as well as the 2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize from the ICA Boston. He is currently part of the 2023 Now + There Public Art Accelerator Cohort. He and his wife Delaney Dameron received a 2020 Transformative Public Arts Grant from the city of Boston to help continue their work with Shelter In Place Gallery, an ongoing miniature art gallery project they opened during the COVID 19 Pandemic to show artists’ work online while the city was in lockdown. Haines lives and works in Boston, MA.