Gwen Smith
Mother, Lover, Artist

Gwen Smith's work connects her archive to history, using nonlinear research and coincidence as a generative device to deepen personal experiences in relationship to larger social and political ones.

In a continuum of association, reverberation and imbrication combining photography, mark making and experience Smith uses metaphors of hierarchy and reproduction to transform racial and familial aggressions into vessels of fantastical hopefulness.

BIO:
Smith lives and works in New York City (LIC Queens)

Smith completed University of Colorado, at Boulder and moved to New York in 1991 to pursue photography: first as a Photo Assistant (Lorna Simpson/ Jeffery Scales/ Jules Allen), then becoming a Photography Research Editor for COLORS (and the design firm M&Co.) Smith spent the next decade at Condé Nast magazines (Details, Vogue and The New Yorker). Smith published her first artist books TROPIC & CANCER (2001 & 2004 onestar press)

In 2004 Smith stopped her editorial career to devote her time to motherhood, raising her son River with her partner Haim Steinbach. Always a practicing flaneur- her projects include a 20 year continual photography series The Message and The Yoda Project which spanned from 2002- 2018. Shifting with the technology of image making Smith began creating physical contact sheets of her digital photographs and extracting images from them, The first iteration, Fuck Cook Look, was shown at Lia Rumma Naples Italy in 2019.

In 2018 after a cascade of loss Smith concentrated on making art as a way to reconcile and demarcate her growth. In 2020 Smith self published monographs that chronicle The Black Woman Project (Vol 1 & 2). The paintings and selfies collage her transition from photography to other forms of image making.

In the fall of 2021 Justine Kurland helped jettison an awareness of Smith as one of the most relevant artists of her generation by granting her an exhibition - ORIGIN- at her DUMBO studio.

Smith received a Rauschenberg Support Grant and was a 2021-22 Artist in Residence at The Center for Book Arts in NYC. In 2022 Smith was a Baxter Street Artist in Residence. In 2023 Smith inaugurated Residency on the Rock, 7|G Foundation and was a participant at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Her poetry broadside A TOTEM OF HEARTS was distributed at the Guggenheim Museum c/o Ama Codjoe , the 2023 poet in residence. Smith has exhibited world wide including at MoMA PS1; the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA; Castelli Gallery, NY; Lia Rumma Gallery,Naples Italy; Huxley Parlour, London; Dominique Gallery, Los Angeles; The Lumber Room, Portland OR; Baxter Street CCNY, NY (solo)

photo by Harlan Bozeman, Shahn Studios, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, 8/2023