UIC Gallery 400 40th anniversary

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, bunding, 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. Often creating drawings and collage works on paper, Smith creates studies for her paintings and sculpture. 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 and discard and how these objects resonate on intimate and social scales.

Born in Baltimore, residing in Los Angeles, Smith’s work has been exhibited and collected by institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum Chicago Transit Authority, Guggenheim Museum; Frist Art Museum; MOMA PS1; Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal; and the Whitney Museum. She has received awards and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and the Joan Mitchell Foundation among others. 

Smith was included in the 2005 UIC Gallery 400 exhibition Drawn Out.