Stepping into Shary Boyle’s work feels like entering a space where complexity is allowed to exist without resolution. It doesn’t simplify or soften the world. It holds it in place.
How We Are, on view from February 14 to May 10, 2026, feels less like an exhibition and more like an environment, where imagination becomes a tool for navigating a world that often feels fractured, unstable, and overwhelming.
We’re not new to this kind of moment. Periods of instability have always pushed artists to rethink how we make sense of the world around us.
Boyle draws from that lineage, echoing the spirit of movements like Surrealism, not by imitating them, but by continuing their impulse to respond to crisis with imagination. Her work builds a language capable of holding contradiction rather than simplifying it.
For Boyle, imagination isn’t an escape. It’s a strategy. A way to process what feels too large, too complex, or too painful to confront directly.
Her figures and forms often feel otherworldly, but they’re grounded in very real concerns. Gendered violence, colonialism, environmental collapse, and systems of power shape the emotional core of the work.
In a world dominated by speed and constant information, Boyle’s work slows things down. These are objects made by hand, fragile, imperfect, and intentionally human.
That material presence matters. It shifts the experience from passive consumption to something more reciprocal. The viewer isn’t just looking; they’re asked to sit, to feel, and to engage with the vulnerability embedded in each piece.
What makes How We Are resonate is its ability to hold two opposing forces at once. There’s wonder here, strange beauty, moments of play, and glimpses of something magical.
But that wonder never erases the weight beneath it. Instead, it creates space for reflection. The work invites us to question, to reconsider, and to sit with discomfort without turning away.
Spending time with Boyle’s work feels like a quiet act of resistance. Against distraction, against simplification, and against the urge to look away.
How We Are runs until May 10. For more information, visit the gallery’s website and allow yourself the time to experience it fully.
