Shary Boyle takes the stage in The Theater at MAD for a richly illustrated discussion of her creative journey from shadow puppetry and performance to her multidisciplinary solo exhibition, Shary Boyle: Outside the Palace of Me currently on view at the Museum through February 25. In the exhibition’s imaginative theatrical space, visitors are cast as active participants in the artist’s interrogations of the performative nature of identity. Continuing the dialogue between artist and audience, Boyle will answer questions and take us through the last decade of her career, in which she represented Canada at the 2013 Venice Biennale, became a highly skilled and deeply imaginative ceramicist, and synthesized her distinct figurative idiom to recast the museum as an empathetic space for considering some of society’s most intractable problems.

About the Artist

Shary Boyle (Canada, b. 1972) works across diverse media, including sculpture, drawing, installation, and performance. Highly crafted and deeply imaginative, her practice is activated through collaboration and mentorship. Boyle’s work considers the social history of figurines, animist mythologies, antiquated technologies, and folk-art forms to create a symbolic, politically charged language uniquely her own. Boyle’s work is exhibited and collected internationally. She represented Canada with her project Music for Silence at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, and her work has been featured at the 2017 Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale in South Korea and the 2021 Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania. Boyle is the recipient of Canada’s Hnatyshyn Foundation Award, the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, and holds a 2021 honorary doctorate of fine arts from the Ontario College of Art and Design University.