International Residency
United States
Image: Sharon Kagan, 'Release Me', 2022, A still from a five-day durational performance at Alfred University
Sharon''s residency with NARS is made possible by Center for Cultural Innovation, USA.
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Sharon Kagan layers intimate stories using performance, video, and needle work, creating a metaphor for how we impact each others’ lives, how an experience can trap or free us, or start the process of unraveling.
Sharon Kagan’s practice focuses on compassion, forgiveness, and resilience utilizing storytelling and knitting. She works in performance, video, sculpture, and installation. Knitting is her primary imagery on which she layers intimate stories transforming this traditional woman's craft into a metaphor for how an experience can trap or free us. Her work speaks to the patterns that are created when a life is broken, a stitch is dropped. But breaking can be an act of breaking free. As a child of Holocaust survivors, she sees resilience, beauty, and integrity amidst damaged lives. This work is based in intersectional feminism and privileges the act of listening, being heard, and hearing, a tenet she learned working on “The Dinner Party” with Judy Chicago.
Sharon Kagan received the CCI Quick Grant, NARS Foundation International Residency, and VSC Residency (2026), and WORD Artist Grant (2021).
Her 2026 exhibitions include "Bearing Witness" (solo) with a durational performance "Leaping, Together" at MOAH, Lancaster; "What Remains: Memory, Ritual, Trace" (three-person) at LAVC; and "Unraveling" (solo) at Outside In.
Kagan performed "…and then this happened…" for LACE at LADP (2025). Previous solo exhibitions include "Compassion in Action," Alfred University, NY (2022); "The Politics of Color," Show Gallery, Hollywood, CA (2020); and "String Theory," College of Southern Idaho, Twin Falls, ID (2020-2021) and Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT (2019).
Kagan is based in Los Angeles. She earned her MFA from Otis Art Institute and her BFA from UCLA.
