Jae Sterling

Jae Sterling is a multidisciplinary artist and founding member of the FOREIGNERZ artist collective and production house. Beginning as a musician, he has extended his art form over the years to include painting (acrylic & oil), digital design & mixed media, streetwear design, creative direction and written essays. Through his early years in Kingston, Jamaica to the landscapes of North America, Jae has spent the past few years developing his artistry by weaving his experiences growing up in Jamaica, South Florida, and coming into adulthood In Canada into all his projects. In 2019, his exploration in hip hop led him to be one of 10 artists selected for the National Music Centre’s Alberta residency program. Sterling has so far released four music projects and has toured in Alberta & Ontario.

In 2020, Sterling embarked on an ambitious year-long multimedia exhibition, Riding Horses with White Men (RHWWM). This exhibition debuted in Calgary in summer 2020. The success of RHWWM led to him being one of Calgary’s first black muralists, painting The Guide & Protector in Chinatown. In 2021 Jae Sterling was invited to be the art fellow & curator of the Arts Commons Incubator Program for the 2021-2022 season. In 2022 Jae curated a month-long multimedia exhibition featuring the work of 17 Alberta based artists in Calgary - New Architects In A Liminal Time, showcasing pandemic art that channels the strange, surreal and survivalist elements of this era. Most recently, Sterling was selected to create a film around his Riding Horses With White Men essays and short stories by Telus Storyhive and The Black Screen Office.

War War War III is a part of Jae Sterling's multidisciplinary exhibition Julian's Dread, which debuted January 2024 at the prestigious Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre, Medicine Hat. Expanding from a series of essays found in his 2020 exhibition Riding Horses with White Men, in 20203, Sterling's short film Jinn Julian premiered in the Calgary International Film Festival. Displaying paintings, artefacts and belongings of the fictional Julian, Sterling asks us to explore the tangible world of his protagonist in Julian's Dread. Symbols of Jamaican youth, Christian fanaticism, magical realism and theosophy can be found in Julian's world -- walking into the cloistered, reclusive and paranoid dwellings of a painter who appears to live without a sense of time or place. What powers does Julian have that we will notice in his room? What old spirits live in his paintings and books? What ghosts lie in Julian's sheets?