THE BREATHING ROOM PERFORMANCE SERIES
Breathing Room: Moon’ Marked Journey, 2022
Released January 2022
a film meditation on breath, Indigo, and blue as a color that has long inspired Smith’s art practice. Smith's original Breathing Room performance which was presented for Open Spaces Kansas City (2018) and at the Baltimore Museum of Art (2020) has evolved into a series of new films. The first of these is Breathing Room: Moon Marked Journey, an homage to indigo blue, one that has been slowly percolating since 2009, when she began to incorporate body prints within her work. With dozens of supporters, Smith successfully funded her Kickstarter campaign to help realize this new iteration of Breathing Room as a film.
“This new, evolved version of Breathing Room is about Indigo, blue, the body, my body as a black woman, and the effect that the blue can have on the body, on memory, and spirit. The film recognizes the amazing blue in every piece of life and the indomitable spirit of Black women.”
Breathing Room: EVOCATION, 2022
Performed Juneteenth 2022 at The Nelson-Atkins Museum
Breathing Room: Bound and Loose, 2020
Performed January 11, 2020 at The Baltimore Museum of Art
Click on image above to watch excerpts. For Full Performance follow this link: https://vimeo.com/438065378
Swaths of deep blue fabric—dyed, bleached, and embedded with words and symbols by Shinique Smith—surround and envelop the artist (Baltimore, MD, b. 1971) during Breathing Room: Bound and Loose. For the meditative performance, Smith rhythmically inhales and exhales while wrapping herself in the indigo fabric. On the significance of indigo, she explains: “With roots in Ancient Peru, India, Japan and Africa, Indigo was once used as currency and was also a significant cash crop alongside cotton and tobacco during the slave trade. Indigo was considered in many cultures to represent the path to the infinite and bring one closer to the sky, a color and history that continues to inspire.”
Once the artist is bound beyond movement, Smith describes that she enters “a deep meditative state with the desire to release and transform a shared cultural experience of toil and bondage into a freed creative power for all who witness and participate as I am unraveled, and my bindings are loosened.” Smith seeks to expand her inner voice and commune with her ancestors through these actions and invites audience members to breathe in rhythm with her to create a shared tapestry of empowering sound.
Image Below from Breathing Room, 2018 - Open Spaces, Kansas City, MO
Bundled Performative Self-Portraits
Untitled (Rodeo Beach Bundle), 2007
Smith bundled herself at Rodeo Beach in Marin County and then attempted to move to different locations to observe the shoreline. Documentation exists in photographic images, and each image has its own edition.
Bundle Me, 2004
Dance Collaborations
Quickening, 2016
Project Atrium, MOCA Jacksonville, Florida
Shinique Smith’s signature bundles of textiles hang in MOCA Jacksonville’s forty-foot high Atrium Gallery against a backdrop of calligraphy and collaged mirror. Because dance, choreography and gesture are interwoven elements in Smith’s practice, Quickening afforded an opportunity to evolve previous dance collaborations by recruiting the talent of a local silk aerialist. Opening night this piece made in a collaboration with aerialist Tempestt Halstead of Bittersweet Studios, located in Jacksonville, Florida was presented.
Gesture III: One Great Turning, 2015
Gesture III: One Great Turning, Astrology, alchemy, mythic love poetry and the motion of the intersection on which The Greenway Wall mural stands inspired this epiphany of three performances enthused by the gesture, materials and conceptual inspirations in her work. Gesture III: One Great Turning was filmed in front of Smith’s mural Seven Moon Junction, with the use of aerial and ground videography. The performance is a manifestation of Smith’s collaborative approach to art making and showcases the breadth of her repertoire through her paintings, large-scale installations and performance based works while grounded by her personal history and influences throughout her life. “When I was a little girl I learned of the Sufi whirling dervishes, and in my innocence, I tried to dance like them. I would spin in the back yard in the hood in Baltimore until my mind was freed.” This idea was the jumping off point for Smith to create a work with dancers that would evoke and expand the mural design and its details through groups of dancers moving with hypnotic resonance. She made skirts by cutting and tying fabrics and created her own textiles from her paintings for the garments that the dancers wore. The parasol props and large swaths of silk fabric were hand painted by Smith and all were integral to the movement. The dynamic process that the KAIROS Dance Theater utilizes was a kindred to Smith’s ideas, which made for a great collaboration wherein the choreography became a mixture of improvisations prompted by Smith’s vision and excerpts from KAIROS’ superbly crafted existing work, Her. Released September 1st, 2015 © Shinique Smith 2015 http://shiniquesmith.com/ http://www.rosekennedygreenway.org/ http://www.kairosdancetheater.org/
Body Prints & Performative Paintings
My Belly Button Window, 2016 - Acrylic Body prints, fabric, collage and brushwork on canvas
Kaleidoscope, 2013 - Acrylic Body prints and brushwork on canvas
One Great Turning, 2013 - Acrylic Body prints, collage and brushwork on canvas
From the pieces to her, 2011
From the pieces to her, 2011
Site-specific installation of the Artist’s body prints and hand-dyed and bundled hanging sculptures and carpet. Created in the project space with window onto W. 21st Street for Play Time group exhibition for Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York. Smith often employs body prints and a collage of gestures within her works which record and affirm her existence. The marks on the wall and the sculptures which populate the space like body parts or a chorus of characters, present a history of motion, sampled and fragmented like notes of music - each piece a part of a theatrical whole.
Twilight’s Compendium, 2009
Twilight’s Compendium, 2009
For this site specific installation, Smith created a catalogue of Prussian blue gestures with her body, text-based brushstrokes, collage and fabric sculpture. Influenced by Carolee Schneeman’s Up to and Including Her Limits and Yves Klein’s body prints, Smith created a monumental self-empowered work utilizing her own body to create dancing motions of freedom, frenzy and wild abandon. These body marks and motions leave a record that expand beyond societal perceptions of the Black female form and reach outward into the exhibition space.