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This article was downloaded by: [University of York]On: 02 November 2014, At: 10:27Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: MortimerHouse, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Unbaled: An Interview with Shinique SmithKymberly N. PinderPublished online: 03 Apr 2014.
To cite this article: Kymberly N. Pinder (2008) Unbaled: An Interview with Shinique Smith, Art Journal, 67:2, 6-17, DOI:10.1080/00043249.2008.10791301
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2008.10791301
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Kymberly N. Pinder
Unbaled:An Interview with
Shinique Smith
Shinique Smith,Arcadian Cluster, 2006,detail, clothing, fabric, found objects, acrylic,collage, and binding, approx. 8 x I I x 8 ft. (2.4 x3.6 x 2.4 rn), suspended 6 ft. 6 in. (2 m) abovefloor, installation view, P.S.I Contemporary ArtCenter (artwork © Shinique Smith)
This interview was conducted through e-mailsand phone conversations between December 23,2007, and January 31, 2008. The text has beenminimally edited for flow.
Shinique Smith has been crossing the boundaries of sculpture, painting, and site
specific installations in her art since she started making it in her teens. The Brooklyn
based artist received a BFA in 1992 and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College
of Art in her hometown of Baltimore in 2003. In the last year and a half, her colorful
bundles of discarded clothing, and abstract wall installations that often include
objects hanging or spilling into the viewer's space, have been featured in over fifteen
exhibitions across the country and abroad, from P.S.I in New York to Schola
dell'Arte dei Tiraoro e Battiloro in Venice. One of her sculptures was also included
in Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2006. Most recently, Smith's mixed
media works have appeared in Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture at
the National Portrait Gallery, in Unmonumental: The Object in the 2/ st Century at the
New Museum, and at the Moti Hasson Gallery in New York. She is represented by
Yvon Lambert Gallery in New York.
The tactility of her Bale Variants series and the luscious calligraphic
marks she makes with everything from paint to bleach, give her work an
alluring, seductive, material density. The desire to limn each layer of her
complex constructions draws one closer to her compositions, to linger
and even get lost in them. Is that really a denim canvas? Is that Kufic
script or an elegant piece of graffiti, or both? Trained as a painter and
with the skill and patience of a pointillist, Smith uses large, bold compo
sitions to draw her audience into her installations, which offer a payoff
worthy of Seurat himself. The collages of found materials and assertive
marks provide an almost endless hunt for the spot where a piece of
black lace may end and a thick, gestural line of paint may begin, or where a strip of
gingham may attach to gauze, creating the edge of a nose-or are they just two lines?
Smith embraces influences from a myriad of local and global, personal and universal
sources. Her work can speak as easily to an ex-boyfriend asto world commerce,
literary history, or consumerist waste. There is a little something there for everyone.
Kymberly N. Pinder: Your work is very much the type of work that I put upfor my art students as examples of what art can and should do: be visually
engaging and rich while having equally rich ideas behind it. I had seen your Balepiece in Frequency at the Studio Museum and remembered finding it incrediblycompelling. Your work has such a presence on a human scale. Ideally, this inter
view should be happening in the gallery, with us stepping around it. You take theconcept of installation and make your sculptures inhabit a space, be it a corner
or the wall. You use industrial materials, or stuff made to look very industrialand mass-produced, to create these extremely organic objects out of them. I alsoappreciate how your work can so deftly flow among so many allusions: graffiti,Kufic script, Baldwin, Hesse, Hammons, and Rauschenberg. Could you tell me abit about your process and about your relationship to text(s)? Do you start withconcepts and drawings or with the materials themselves?
Shinique Smith: I use text as a vehicle toward abstraction. The texts are personal mantras comprised of phrases from literature, lyrics from songs, soundbytes from passersby, etc. I combine the bits and pieces in a personal way.Theyare mostly affirmations. I use the act of writing as a form of frenetic meditation-which is centering-and then I think it formally connects the works in
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Shinique Smith, Sale Variant No. 0006, 2005,fabric. clothing. accessories. twine.and wood. 72x 54 x 54 in. (182.9x 137.2x 137.2cm) (artwork© Shinique Smith)
my installations. Perhaps the texts represent what the sculptures would say. The
act of writing can be very ritualistic, like the act of binding ... these lines stringeverything together, like superstrings.
Pinder: The wrapping and rewrapping of text and lines, lines around textiles orold clothes, also appear ritualistic. Is there an overall meditative quality to your
process?
Smith: Yes, in my artist statement I call it "frenetic meditation." The things thatI write turn into affirmations, and making collage, the dissecting/cutting of thetext and piecing it back together, can be meditative. I don't like to say too muchabout this [process] because for many people making art is a spiritual endeavor.I've found many connections to various cultures that use bundling and tying forspiritual reasons, such as tying things together to create fetish objects.
Pinder: Critics often describe your work as bridging sculpture and painting.
The graffiti in your work explains all of that for me, since the tagger is alwayspainting on sculpture, essentially transforming 3-D objects with written ges-
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Shinique Smith, Arcadian Cluster, 2006,clothing, fabric, found objects, acrylic, collage, andbinding, approx. 8 x I I x 8 ft. (2.4 x 3.6 x 2.4 m),suspended 6 ft. 6 in. (2 m) above floor, installationview, P.S.l Contemporary Art Center (artwork© Shinique Smith)
I. Smith's e-mail slgnature.from jean Tlnguely. ls"Life is movement."
tures. The Light through Her Curtain is a good example. Graff is about motion and sois your work. I But what interests me more is what drew you to abstraction and
away from representation. Was this choice graff-based also?
Smith: Please! I like that you see the connection between painting and sculpturewithin "tagging," but my inclination toward abstraction is broader than that. Istarted out with the figure-making figurative representations of life. But I feelthat abstraction is a better way for me to communicate life, rather than depict it.
Pinder: An aside: did you tag in Baltimore while at MICA?
Smith: No, not really while I was at MICA; in Baltimore while in high school,twenty years ago. I think this influence on my work is nostalgic-the feel of playfrom my youth. There is that thrill and sense of discovery of making somethingout of nothing. That scene still thrives there with great artists like Stab,Shaken,Mode, and others.
Pinder: I can tell you are sick of being asked about graffiti in your work. I askedmainly because I teach a mural history class in which I get many graff writers
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Shinique Smith, The Torch Heroes Bare,2007, mixed media on wood panel, 8 x 10ft.(243.8 x 304.9 em) (artwork © Shinique Smith)
2. For Recognize! Hip Hop andContemporaryPottraitur«, National Portrait Gallery, SmithsonianInstitution, Washington, DC, February 8--0etober26,2008.
and I find them to be some of the best students I have ever had because they are
so well-trained ar drawing skills and in their knowledge of art history.
Smith: Yes, I am, but not sick of my connection to graffiti ... just sick of howthe conversation on graffiti gets framed. People want to simplify it all and sayit is just about "the streets." My experience with graffiti is genuine, but I alsohave a fine-arts background. I also studied Japanese calligraphy. My hand retainsaspects from my experience as a kid, but it [my hand] is not just one thing.[Graffiti] writers have a different sense of scale.They have a different sense ofcolor, speed, and composition. For example, they normally start with a sketchand essentially blow it up on a wall, without need of a projector. It's all therein the sketch, in the drawing, the plan. I don't really work that way. I don't
usually have a sketch. I start with the wall, and I don't know how it will turnout. It's freestyle. I'm doing the first Site-specific work, I think, ever to be doneat National Portrait Gallery.2 I leave tomorrow to install, and I was asked whenwould be the best time to take installation shots. I have no idea at the moment!I'm making a painting and a collage onsite, and I don't know. It will just
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Shinique Smith, Sketch for TakeMy Apples,2005, graphite on paper, study for installation,8/\ x II in. (21.6 x 27.9 em) (artwork © ShiniqueSmith)
happen as I work with the space. When I get there and start the work, I willknow more.
Pinder: There are a few of your compositions on paper whose titles refer tostudies, such as Study for Love Parade Bale. How do these works figure into your
process? When do you work up sketches?
Smith: I use studies to put down ideas. The studies you refer to are ideas about
color and/or place for potential sculptures or projects.
Pinder: The recent show at Moti Hasson included large-format photographs ofyour bale pieces in landscapes, environments. Could you talk a bit about these
pictures? What kind of documentation are they? Is this new for you?
Smith: These photos are documents of site-specific, performative events in
which I bundled myself on the beach. I was interested in applying the same gestures to my body as I do to my sculptures, as if I were material, too. These pho
tographs document the end of the process: the product. The action itself involvedgestural movements-I don't know how things look from the outside because Iam wrapped within the piece, in a sort of cocoon. These were done during myHeadlands residency, near Rodeo Beach [in Marin County, California]. I havealways taken a lot of photos; some are used as source material. I work in a holistic way. I do a lot of different things at once.
Pinder: Could you talk also about the video in the Hasson show and how thatmedium has been a part of your work?
Smith: Video has been part of my work since my first year of undergrad. I've mademany videos that I've not shown in a gallery context. I was very involved in film,out of college. I worked on movies, I founded a film festival and ran it for five years,
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Shinique Smith, a Bull.a Rose. a Tempest,2007, clothing, accessories, and binding, approx.30 in. diam. (76.2 em) (artwork © Shinique Smith)
Shinique Smith, Rodeo Beach 3, 2007, digitalC-print, 18 x 22 in. (45.7 x 55.9 em)(artwork © Shinique Smith)
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Shinique Smith, Voodoo Children 11,2007,clothing, fabric, rope, wire, ribbon, and walldrawing, dimensions variable (artwork ©Shinique Smith)
Shinique Smith, ThankYou, Come Again,2007, installation view and detail, ex-boyfriend'sclothing, socks, and change, acrylic and paper onwood panel with vinyl and objects, 60 x 40 x12 in. (I S2.4 x 101.6 x 30.S cm) (artwork ©Shinique Smith)
and I've taught cinema studies.The video in the show [All Purpose] is an excerpt froma longer piece that involved a narrative. I'm interested in mythology and fantasy
in film, and I wanted to make something loosely inspired by legend. But, withinthe editing process, I found that the clips of the two "fairies" frolicking and fight
ing were most interesting visually. Their gestures seemed to be similar, thoughexpressing different action. I think that that particular work will be expanded
on very soon.
Pinder: How does an artist face the burden of what is going on in the world
today? Do you feel compelled to create work that can have a political dimension?I am thinking of the BaleVariants. I ask this because of the common, mistaken perception of abstraction as apolitical.
Smith: It is not an issue of just the world we live in now; the world has alwayshad a lot going on for people to respond to. Some people do not do politicalwork in direct response to the way the world is. I try to keep away from doingwork out of a feeling offalse obligation. The bales are a marriage of two things:the global issue of the reuse and recycling of clothes sent abroad and the formalbeauty of bales themselves. As for making political art, I don't set up assignmentsor limitations for myself. First, I was trained as a painter. I had never taken anysculpture classes. It took me a while to reconcile how to make the Bale sculptures.I was trying to make shipping bales of clothes with my own hand. I'm not amachine, so the first ones were balls, organic bundled shapes. I've found thatmostly the materials I'm using determine form. How things can be physicallybound together also affects the finished product.
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Shinique Smith, No Thief to Blame, 2008,installation view and detail, mixed media, dimensions variable (artwork © Shinique Smith)
Pinder: And the inevitable race and "Fsshow" question: as with so many ofthe African American artists whose careers were "launched" by appearing in the
Freestyle show, how did being in Frequency affect your career and your work?
Smith: It was a great show to be in, because of its media exposure and the goodcompany I was showing with. However, there is no one show that makes or breaksyour career. It is a string of shows and evolution in the work that affectsmovement.
Pinder: Do you feel. as an African American woman abstractionist, that yourwork is expected to reflect both or either a feminine sensibility and an Africanaesthetic or some kind ofracial concerns?
Smith: I do not focus on outside expectations. I know what I know and am me.The work should tell you what I'm about. Art is subjective, and the read will
shift according to the viewers and their experience of the world.
Kymberly N. Pinder is an associate professor and chair of art history, theory, and criticism at the School ofthe Art Institute of Chicago. She is the editor of Race-ing Art History: Critical Readings in RaceandArtHistory (Routledge, 2002).
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