Shary Boyle's Exploration of the Fantastic and Political Lives of Clay

Hyperallergic

Canadian artist Shary Boyle is known for her incredible ability to transform clay and ceramic into feats of delicate wonder, using the human body and the history of the material to delve into the undercurrents and meanings often overlooked by contemporary viewers.

In the second in a four-part podcast series produced by Hyperallergic in conjunction with the Gardiner Museum's Community Arts Space: What we long for initiative, she reminds us: "Let us not let the art world homogenize us when we all individually as young people might have chosen to become artists."

She continues, "I chose to become an artist to try to pursue a life of true questioning and subversion and an alternative position to what I saw as a common drive towards capitalist values of growth and progression and I want to just to continually have access to watching and observing and questioning that."

In this episode, I speak to the artist about her relationship to a material that has been having a renaissance in contemporary art, and she shares her insight into a material that appears in almost every culture in history.

A special thanks to Brooklyn-based musician SunSon for providing the music to this episode, and you can check out his website sunson.band. You can also follow him on Facebook or Instagram.