St. Elmo Artist-in-Residence Talk: Taisha Carrington
Installation view of Taisha Carrington, The Derivants, 2026, at Green Hall Gallery, Yale School of Art, 2026. Motors, AC power controllers, wood, gravel from Stony Creek New Haven, sand from Stony Creek New Haven, rock from New Haven, fabric, rubber bands, flanges, wood, stainless steel, steel, electrical tape, copper wire. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Pat Garcia.
The Visual Arts Center welcomes 2026–27 St. Elmo Arts Residency Fellow Taisha Carrington for an artist talk examining her interdisciplinary practice across sculpture and performance. Tracing her path from Barbados to New Haven, Carrington will discuss how she uses natural materials, such as soil and ocean water, to uncover the physical and cultural histories they carry. The artist’s solo exhibition will open at the VAC on January 22, 2027, where she will use dust as a medium to explore deep time and celestial bodies in relation to her own. The presentation will be one hour and will be followed by a Q&A session.
About the artist
Taisha Carrington received her MFA in Sculpture from Yale University in 2026 and a BFA from Pratt Institute in 2018. Her work traces parallels between deep time, the micro-macro movement of particles in bodies of air or water, and the geopolitical conditions of Caribbean microstates, particularly her native Barbados. Carrington studies how humans migrate and adapt by observing how non-human organisms do the same in nature. Viewing materiality as both method and theory, she works with soil, ocean water, breath, sweat, sand, and plants to surface narratives embedded within their material properties. Her research takes the form of sculpture, performance, installation, painting, and video.
Carrington’s work can be found in the collections of The Dallas Museum of Art and the Stewart Program for Modern Design in Montreal. She has exhibited works in the United States, Aruba, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and Barbados, and has participated in residencies including Pratt>Forward and Caribbean Linked x BIAC Reseaux as part of the Biennale in Martinique. Taisha has presented Lectures or workshops with several institutions including Museum of Art and Design NY, Yale Centre for British Art, United Nations Development Program Barbados, Metropolitan State University Denver, Walkers Institute for Regenerative Research, Campus Caraïbéen des Arts and Central Saint Martins. Taisha was the inaugural Fellow in Residence in the Jewelry and Metals department at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2024, where she taught and conducted artistic research, and was the 2026 artist fellow at the Yale Peabody Museum.
About the St. Elmo Arts Residency
The St. Elmo Arts Residency Fellowship offers a one-year fellowship to a recent graduate of an MFA studio art program outside the University of Texas system, who specializes in painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, or multimedia. The residency includes a stipend, a one-year faculty position in the Department of Art and Art History, housing with a private studio, access to UT’s academic and art lab resources, and a fully funded exhibition at the Visual Arts Center.