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It would be tempting to assume the title of Jae Sterling’s first art exhibit, Riding Horses with White Men, is a not-so-subtle reference to a young Jamaican man’s response to Calgary and its most prominent cultural event.
Sterling says the paintings are definitely inspired by a sense of isolation and fish-out-of-water feeling he has had since arriving from Jamaica in 2009 as a 19-year-old. But while the title and timing of the exhibit, which opens Thursday during what would have traditionally been the height of Stampede fever, may suggest a direct correlation to the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, Sterling says the scope is much broader.
“It’s about Calgary and about my experience here in Calgary, so I guess the Stampede ties into it,” says Sterling. “But it’s about my entire experience here. And, funny enough, (the Stampede) was not that foreign to me. That’s the catch. I’m from Jamaica, I come from an island, and I came to Calgary. But I did grow up on farmland in Jamaica. My parents, my grandparents, we all grew up on farmland. It’s really not that foreign to me, that whole Stampede thing. But what is foreign to me is to see it in this setting.”
