Stina’s work resides both here and elsewhere with thematics of Afro and Black diaspora experiences, archival data and storytelling being at the center. Her praxis uses a multiplicity of approaches that include textile-based techniques (such as beadwork, embroidery, patchwork/ quiltmaking) as well as metalwork, print media, text, sculpture, electronics/ coded technologies and sound to articulate Black diasporic life.
In her textiles, labour is a core component in the process. She investigates and redefines time, both in process and conceptual execution- the accounted hours, the material and technique-based history of the fibre or dye, the performative (repetitive) labour that occurs in the background, in-studio -form deep connections to memory and the stories she aims to tell.
Stina’s practice employs traditional African and Haitian ways of making textiles intertwined with systems strategies and literary referencing to speak of the real and imagined archival silences.
In “The Sky Still Carries the Stories”, Stina amplifies a silenced history through the creation of a visually and sonically compelling large-scale installation. She draws on Black quilting techniques, indigo, ancient constellatory countermapping and the oral tradition of the “call and response”. The labour of creating the majority of the piece by hand, which took over 8 months to fabricate, is a tribute to honour the Black lives that lived and endured challenging conditions historically at this site.
In her Data Studies, reclaimed keyboard keys, annotated paper pulped text and denim question our implication to commodities, placing people on x / y axis in geographical landscapes outside of our imaginaries. Colorblocked statistical records in cottons and linens abstractly speak to the migratory movements of her family and other Caribbean Canadians.
In the creation of Black Time, she is reminded of Audre Lorde’s famous quote, “The master's tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. The unravelling of the master’s narrative asks us about the purpose of the clock as a tool and for whom. Can an object we have been trained to understand as an indicator of time be used differently? How about a graph? ‘Black Cartographies’ and ‘Black Time’ both reconsider the ways we visualize data, time and the materiality of information.
Building an iconography that employs bricolage, Baudin assembles fragmented stories into material expressions that move between fact and fiction, truth and myth, past and present.
Stina is the recipient of the Gilbert Foundation Scholarship and the Maxwell/ Hanrahan Foundation Materials Award (US) from Cranbrook for 2024/5. She has participated in international residencies at ZK/U Berlin (DE), the Banff Centre for Art and Creativity (CA), and Pocoapoco (MX). Recent exhibitions include the Joliette Museum (CA), Centre Clark and Toronto Biennial of Art (2024). Her work has been supported by the Canada Council, CALQ, and Holon Berlin.
Her work has been featured in arts and media publications internationally, including:
Frieze magazine (US), Refuge WorldWide Radio (DE), Esse, CBC (CA), Hyperallergic (US), Logic(s) Magazine (US), Ocula Art Magazine (UK), La Presse (CA), Le Devoir (CA), Canadian Art Daily, Studio Magazine (CA) p, Digital in Berlin (DE), Blackflash Magazine (CA), Craft and Craftivism (CA), Surface Design Association (US).
Stina Baudin is presently a 2026-2029 studio cohort resident at the Fonderie Darling.