Behind the Scenes with Sterling Ruby

Artist Sterling Ruby, whose largest museum survey to date opened at the ICA/Boston in March 2020, talks about how he became an artist and seeing two decades worth of work in one place. Since his earliest works, Ruby has investigated the role of the artist as an outsider. Critiquing the structures of modernism and traditional institutions, Ruby addresses the repressed underpinnings of U.S. culture and the coding of power and violence. Craft is central to his inquiry, as he explores California’s radical ceramics history and traditions of Amish quilt making, shaped by his upbringing in Pennsylvania Dutch country. The process of combining disparate elements is central to Ruby’s material reclamations, which serve as a form of autobiographical and cultural archeology. Organized loosely by chronology and medium, "Sterling Ruby" considers the artist’s explorations of these themes across the many materials and forms he has utilized throughout his practice. "Sterling Ruby" is organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, ICA/Boston, and Alex Gartenfeld, Artistic Director, ICA, Miami, with Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager, ICA/Boston.