AGO X RBC Artist-In-Residence blends beadwork with performance
Sharl G. Smith’s artistic ambitions keep getting bigger—and the AGO X RBC Artist-In-Residence program has served as an incubator for one of her most fascinating projects yet.
The AGO X RBC Artist-In-Residence initiative welcomes three early-career artists per year to work on projects over a three-month period at the museum. Artists in the program have access to the Anne Lind Artist-In-Residence studio, as well as mentorship from AGO curators and staff.
Smith began her residency on February 1, sculpting an artwork using the technique of bead-stitching, a process that references her background in architecture. The work is also inspired by Smith’s exploration of Jamaican identity, Christian and African religions and colonialism.
“The questions I had personally just kept getting louder, about my expression as a female, my identity as a Jamaican, and being raised in a fundamentalist Christian religion,” Smith says. “Architecturally, beads are very modular, like cells in organisms, where every bead matters and how they’re bonded matters.”
Smith says the research she was able to conduct in the AGO’s Edward P. Taylor Library & Archives, in addition to the conversations she had with Dr. Julie Crooks, Curator, Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, helped to shape both her residency project and her artistic practice.
“I’m so grateful because I’m not coming from an art school background and I’m hungry for information. These discussions helped me feel more solid about beadwork as a practice and how my themes resonate with a lot of people.”
Smith’s project will conclude in dazzling fashion with a performance event later this year. Sparked by the 2024 AGO X RBC Artist-In-Residence theme of movement, she worked with dancers to conceive a live combination of dance and beadwork.
“When I did my first large-scale sculpture with beads, I worked with two local artists in Kitchener, and while we were making it we were doing a kind of dance,” Smith says of the process, which involved the artists developing an unspoken choreography.
“I wanted to invite people into this very spiritual and communal act.”
Stay tuned to the AGO’s events page to find out when you can see Sharl G. Smith’s performance.