Shinique Smith is known for her monumental fabric sculptures and abstract paintings of calligraphy and collage. Inspired by her cultured childhood experiences, Smith has gleaned visual poetry from clothing and explored concepts of ritual using breath, binding, and calligraphy as tools toward abstraction. Her layered works range from palm-sized bundled microcosms to monolithic bales to massive chaotic paintings that contain vibrant and carefully collected mementos from her life. Smith’s practice operates at the convergence of consumption and spiritual sanctuary, balancing forces and revealing connections across space and time, race, gender and place to suggest the possibility of new worlds. Smith’s personal histories and belongings intertwine with thoughts of the vast nature of ‘things’ that we consume, cherish, gift, and discard and how these objects resonate on intimate and social scales.
Smith (b.1971, Baltimore, MD) attended the famed Baltimore School for the Arts for high school, Maryland Institute College of Art, obtaining a BFA in 1992 and MFA in 2003. She also received her Master of Arts in Teaching from Tufts University and the Museum School in 2000. Notable solo exhibitions include The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, (2023-25); Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME, (2023); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS (2022); Baltimore Museum of Art, MD (2020); California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2018); Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art, Harlem, NY (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, FL (2016); Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (2015); The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (2014); Eli and Edyth Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, MI (2014); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2013); SCAD Museum, Atlanta, GA (2011); Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Fl (2010); and the Studio Museum in Harlem, Harlem, NY (2009), among others.
Smith’s work is currently included in the group exhibition By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection (2024). Her work is included in the group exhibition Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, which originated at the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN in 2023, is currently at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX through May 12, 2024, and travels to the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., from July 6–September 22, 2024. Other notable group shows include the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C; and the Newark Museum, NJ, among others. She has created several landmark public works for NY Metro Arts, Chicago Transit Authority, Wabash Arts Corridor Chicago, and USCF Medical Center among others, and has recently launched her monumental new mosaic mural to the public at MLK Jr Crenshaw station as part of the Los Angeles Metro’s New K Line. Smith will present a newly commissioned installation at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields summer 2024.
Public collections include The Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Denver Art Museum, CO; Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, IN; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanas City, MO; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LA; Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, FL; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Newark Museum of Art, NJ; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL; UBS Art Collection, New York, NY; among others. She is the recipient of several awards and prizes including the American Academy of Arts & Letters Purchase Prize, (2022); Anonymous Was a Woman Artist Award (2016); Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2013); MICA Alumni Medal of Honor (2012); Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship (2008); and the Aljira Center for Contemporary Arts Fellowship (2005). Smith currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.