FLAUNT MAGAZINE - January 19, 2022

SHINIQUE SMITH | BREATHING ROOM: MOON MARKED JOURNEY

BY MADELEINE SCHULZ

Shinique Smith’s latest project, Breathing Room: Moon Marked Journey is an ode to the color blue. It’s also her first foray into film. The multidisciplinary artist ventures into the new medium to meditate on indigo and blue as colors which have long inspired her artistic practice. Smith reflects on the impact of the color on her body, memory and spirit. On the evolution of the film, Smith says that it “recognizes the amazing blue in every piece of life and the indomitable spirit of Black women.”

Breathing Room brings together a host of African American creators, including poet Glenis Redmond and singer Georgia Anne Muldrow, both of whom contribute to the sound of the piece. Visuals feature dancer and choreographer Jessica Emmanuel and yoga practitioner Sana Malik. Their movements complement Smith's own visual artwork, the blues of which color her film. 

A preview of Smith’s work , accompanied by a breathwork performance, will premiere on Vimeo, Facebook, and YouTube on January 30, 2022, at 1 pm PST. The full feature will then debut at her upcoming solo show at the Nerman Museum in Spring 2022.

RSVP for the virtual preview here.

SCULPTURE MAGAZINE - May/June 2021

Metropolis Magazine

BlackBook Magazine - Arts & Culture, Published: June 12, 2020

Essay: Artist Shinique Smith on Standing With Grace and Dignity

Like Charlottesville, VA before it, Baltimore became a geographical symbol of America’s racial divisions when Donald Trump hatefully called it a “rodent-infested mess” in 2019. It was one of the fuses that was lit that led to the explosion of protests in Minneapolis following the murder of George Floyd—and so many others—which then ignited similar protests across the continents.

The Baltimore Museum of Art has also become a symbol—a cultural one—of the struggles for justice and equality in America that seem to move forward only to get pushed back again. It has enacted a bravely ideological policy to acquire works only by women for the entire calendar year of 2020. And it has steadfastly supported the work of artists of color. One such work, Shinique Smith’s Grace Stands Beside (which is on exhibit through August 9, though the museum remains closed for now), is as powerful and relevant as it is possible to be at such a time as this. She has described it as representing, “a complex state of being that Black people and others who have endured tragic prejudice have embodied to survive and to rise beyond.”

Smith, now living and working in Los Angeles, was born in Baltimore in 1971. After a stint in the film industry (she launched an African American film festival in Seattle), she went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2003. She soon gained wide acclaim for her visceral, spiritually-imbued sculptural creations, exhibiting everywhere from New York to Miami, Venice to Paris. Her work is now held in the permanent collections at the Brooklyn Museum, Denver Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, amongst others.

She kindly accepted BlackBook‘s invitation to elucidate the title Grace Stands Beside within the context of this historic moment in America.

Grace Stand Beside Us All

Grace Stands Beside…me please, always and now…

…after bearing witness to willful murder and feeling the reverberations of that breathless moment—within protests and in the sad and angered eyes of strangers, who I feel akin to, through shared similar experiences of horror, disappointment and helplessness. A moment that vibrates with the possibility for radical change and with an awareness that George or Breonna could have been someone I knew or loved or me.

How does anyone process? One emotes, reflects and transcends as one can. This is a learned and practiced exercise employed often. And, inevitably flashes of memories resurface from my dungeon of racist encounters. ‘Central Park Amy’ triggered my memory of that one time over 20 years ago when I was a young woman working as a freelance production assistant and the only Black crew member on a semi-popular 90’s thriller starring a now famous blonde actress who was the same age as me at the time.

My main job was to wrangle and transport the talent, and for over a month we had worked together, this actress and I, in a very friendly and easy manner. Until one day when she arrived late with shopping bags from a spontaneous spree, making her and her fellow lead actors late to set (for which I was being blamed). I briefly and jokingly chastised her for her shopping, which was not out of step with the rapport she and I had developed, then we all jumped into the van and I drove them to set.

Her expression changed and the whole way there she was quiet. When we arrived, everyone rushed to hair and makeup. The next thing I knew one of the producers called me over because I had been accused of threatening this actress. She had told them that I was ‘aggressive’, and she did not feel ‘safe’ around me. Her words hurt me and gave the producer reason to reassign me, and the bigoted assistant director leave to harass me all night by mocking my name over the walkie talkie. I tried to speak with her, but she wouldn’t even look me in the eye.

This was a production I had worked on for months during pre-production and production and built connections which may have taken me to the next job; and her wounded pride convinced her it was okay to fabricate this lie and besmirch my reputation. In the mix of it all (grace stood beside me)—I remained professional even though I wanted to cry from the shock and hurt. I stood poised with my name being mangled over the radio—fighting tears and rising above what I knew was racist behavior—not a threat to my life but to my livelihood and my reputation. This was one of many encounters from 1st grade to the present that have sought to hinder me. There are countless stories like this with mild to much more damaging effects for Black people—many tears have fallen and choked down for later expression.

Some may perceive that when Black people cry, that we are always crying (which if it were true would be justified, because there aren’t enough collective tears to relieve the pain we’ve endured). When Black people protest in response to a horrendous loss of innocent life at the hands of those who have the duty to protect us, we are identified as destructive, violent and enraged (though if we were truly savage this entire country would have been burned down long ago); and if Black people stand with dignity in the midst of tragedy, though we feel every wicked glance, we are perceived as though nothing bothers us—as though we are unshakeable (and in the end we are just that, unshakeable).

We are human beings that over centuries have endured more than many humans could bear and continue to do so because GRACE is in our DNA. Demonstrating Grace is an evolved state of being—some may call it having spiritual resolve, wherein we strive to transform personal and public tragedies, losses, slights, and ‘Amy Cooper’ type gestures that have happened daily throughout our lives, into positive energy for our own individual and collective survival.

Our Grace vibrates kindness, strength, wisdom, generosity to All and it shines in our Creative Expressions. Grace glows from within us. Grace shines through our eyes and through our skin and that Grace radiates—contributing incredible light and gifts to the whole of the world. And I imagine that it is this Grace that may be most intimidating to those who have sought to dim our light. It must truly be vexing that our light shines even brighter despite the assaults waged against us.

Sincerely, I hope with the Grace which resides within me, that one day, all will respect the warmth and joy of our light and our lives. Until then may Grace Stand Beside Us All.

LA Times ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS

Review: In Shinique Smith’s ‘Refuge,’ bits of past make for a compelling present by Leah Ollman - July 3, 2018

Call it activist assemblage. Shinique Smith has set up a “Donation Center” in one corner of her stirring show at the California African American Museum. Bins of travel-size toiletries, pillows, tarps, socks and toys load the shelves.

“Be an American,” declaims the plastic cover on a plush red, white and blue blanket. The command rings hollow as a packaging slogan, but Smith lays it out there as a pointed provocation, part of the show’s larger assertion that acts of nurture and nationhood, art and humanity are profoundly linked. Smith works across media, typically in combinations of painting, sculpture, collage and installation. Fabric is the constant throughout — swaths of cloth and fragments of garments, cut, glued, tied and bundled. Much of the material Smith uses has already played a role in the world, sheltering or adorning a body. In its new context, the memory of its prior purpose merges with the promise, mostly metaphorical, of a new function.

One 2018 work hangs by its corners along one long wall like the true flag of our planet. Huge and heavy, it’s a patchwork of quilted moving blankets, plastic tarps, denim jeans, printed fabrics, recycled shopping bags and the nylon skin of an umbrella. The sky above us all is continuous, knowing no boundaries. Its emblem here is pieced together with scrappy dignity, stuff of the earth repurposed as the roof of heaven. “Refuge” is the title of the show (organized by independent curator Essence Harden) and its pervasive theme. “The Watcher (Moon marked she walks in starlight)” (2018) looks to be in search of it, a vagabond figure fashioned of all sorts of cloth hued to the night’s palette, stuffed, ribboned and roped. In the manner of a homeless soul wearing all of her belongings, she is lumpen and oversized, a potent presence — part shared ancestor, part common fate.

Smith provides an allusion to the solace of refuge in “Love Resides” (2018), an installation that lines one wall with domestic bits and pieces skewed into symbols: a pedestal sink littered with small bars of soap; a sheer black dress on a hanger; a cushioned milk crate; a child’s drawing wrapped in plastic. At the opposite end of the gallery, the installation continues in the form of a nook snugly fit with a cardboard box, outfitted like a miniature home with a rug and fake plant. The private sanctuary of a child resourced with wonder, and close kin to the provisional abode of a street-bound adult, driven by need. Nurture and nationhood converge again, and clash anew.

‘Refuge’ by Deborah Vankin, LA TIMES, June 13, 2018

Los Angeles Times: Shinique Smith’s ‘Refuge’ explores shelter, homelessness and the excess of our stuff - By Deborah Vankin, June 13, 2018 - Article Excerpt

Shinique Smith was filling her car’s gas tank late one night in February when she noticed a vase and a child’s pink, plastic scooter sitting atop a garbage can. As an artist who works with found objects, she rounded up what she assumed to be trash. Then a homeless man living out of his truck emerged, directing her attention to handwritten price tags on the objects. He was selling the goods for gas money. Smith filled his tank in exchange for the items, then incorporated them into an art installation she was making about homelessness and the exchange of goods flowing through donation centers.

That finished piece, “Donation Center” (2018), is one of several works on view through Sept. 9 in Smith’s solo exhibition “Refuge” at the California African American Museum. The show has theatrical installations, abstract paintings, mixed media wall works and soft sculptures made from recycled clothing, scraps of fabric, personal items and found objects, among other materials. “Things that were mine, things that belonged to friends and family. Stuff,” Smith says. “Really basic stuff stands out to me. I’m fascinated by the way we feather our nests as creatures. And the way we survive when we don’t have a nest.”

‘Bright’ Ideas by Geoff Edgers, BOSTON GLOBE: Sunday Arts, August 14, 2014

‘Bright’ Ideas - Shinique Smith to show works of youthful exuberance at the MFA and on the Dewey Square mural wall -  Article Excerpt

The Catskills, NY - In the center of Shinique SMith’s studio is a table that would be the envy of any arts-and-crafts teacher. Stacked eye-high, it holds swatches of fabric, jars of costume jewelry, even a clear container of crushed cans. “That is like gold,” Smith said, delicately lifting one of the crinkled, aluminum castoffs. “Especially with a straw. Who drinks a Coors with a straw?” Smith’s work space is a bright, rectangular room inside a renovated barn. With a DVD of “Grease” or “Clueless” playing in the background, she crafts canvases marked by bright colors, indecipherable messages, and attached fabrics and other materials. This is where she’s finished up her final pieces for “Shinqiue Smith: BRIGHT MATTER,” a show that will open Aug. 23rd at the Museum of Fine Arts. It’s also where Smith has plotted out what will be her most high-profile work yet: a mural that will be painted next month the Dewey Square wall that has previously featured art by Os Gemeos and Matthew Ritchie.

Clothes Connections, by Barbara Pollack, ARTNews, January 2010

Shinique Smith transforms piles of garments destined for export into eye- and thought provoking installations

In an industrial building near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Shinique Smith maintains an extremely tidy studio, with her new canvases lining the walls and a collection og fabrics of every hue neatly folded on metal shelving in the center of the space. It is somewhat unexpected to find such an orderly arrangement, in the light of the exuberant chaos of many of the artist’s bets works: towering piles of discarded clothes tied into rectangular bales, and expressionistic curlicues of calligraphy spilling across museum walls. Smith defies the label of hip-hop artist that critics sometimes use to pigeonhole her creations. “I am blow away by Shinique Smith’s sensitivity toward material, how she brings materials of such different qualities together and works with them in an almost painterly manner,” says Christoph Heinrich, the new director of the Denver Art Museum.

SHINIQUE SMITH: BODY MIND BALLET AND THE LEGIBLE CITY By Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky the Subliminal Kid - Menagerie exhibition catalogue 2010 - Excerpt

REMIX OF THAT STATEMENT: The future isn’t what it used to be. When we look in the rear view mirror of the beginnings of the 21st century, the idea of a reasonably coherent situation that manifested as African American art in the fabric of everyday life in the megalopolis most of us will be calling home for most of the 21st century become foregrounded: you can see the uneasy tension between life and its simulations in the infor-mation economy that makes up the bulk of the post-industrialized world’s logic of production. Perhaps that’s what Jacobs meant. What we see as entertainment, what we see as the notion that there is a reflexive vocabulary of a media landscape that responds to how we of the post Myspace/Facebook/Twitter/Youtube etc generation generate “meaning” by turning everything that previous generations would have called “privacy” inside-out, that’s the way we live now.

One could argue that Smith’s work reflects that sense of “libidinal economy” by simply positing an autobio-graphical statement scripted onto the materials she uses to generate her art. Where is the “nature” in that context when you look at the city as a legible script like Smith does? In Smith’s view, you make up your own role, but her work is the guidepost to the experience. When I look at works like My Heart is My Hand, 2010, the calligraphic works combined with the other media leads directly to a kind of puzzle that asks to be deciphered, and in doing so, we reverse engineer the process and see the work as a kind of film scene where the characters move backwards into a kind of involution of narrative. It’s as if the work is a kind of stage setting, like Lars Van Trier’s Dogtown where the staging has been reduced to its most elemental forms.