Recently graduating with her MFA from USF in 2016, her drawings and paintings have explored racial and social injustices from the perspective of a black female navigating the dichotomies of beauty and imperfection; innocence and deviance; and weakness versus strength. And it opened just in time to honor the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday as well as Black History Month.
While giving the finger to beauty standards in society, she also seems to be shunning normative beauty standards in traditional art forms like painting and drawing as well by her use of vivid, almost unbearable color paired with the harsh black of the charcoal. Despite the unfiltered points-of-view, Smith’s acute sensitivity towards her subjects are equally matched in the sensitivity in which she wields a piece of charcoal or pencil — you can easily get lost in the soft shading under and arm or leg with her adept material handling.
What always gets me is the striking gaze of her painted figures, especially in “Swing Swing Swing,” a large-scale mixed media work on paper that stares you down from the opposite end of the exhibition space. Beautifully citing Frida Kahlo in a kind of “coming to terms with oneself” double-portrait (but unsure if it’s a self-portrait), the two women hold a sense of autonomy with their direct gazes. Particularly, the nude figure’s uplifted eyebrow gives her an immense amount of power; she doesn’t even have to say, “What’re you lookin’ at?” for us to know who’s in control here.
Control is also displayed in how her legs splayed as a presentation, but we are stopped in our tracks as we are denied view with excess skin obscuring and protecting her womanhood. The red of the flesh is both meaty and yet not quite right, contrasting harshly with the one figure’s highlighter-green shirt and shoes. Visually harsh, but tender in execution, Smith’s narratives are explicit, but are only fragments — never quite allowing for the full story to unfold. That is up to the viewer to filter through.
The racial narratives and bright colors in Smith’s work align with the other exhibition on campus in Gallery 221: Utopias. Featuring the work of Mark Thomas Gibson and William Villalongo, you may recognize their names from their simultaneous two-person-show/curatorial masterpiece with Woke! and Black Pulp! at USF CAM last year. As an encore, the two artists will exhibit paintings, etchings, and prints that bridge between their interests in race, history, and graphics to reflect on the Black experience. It’s time to get your fill on some figurative-based works.
This article appears in Feb 1-8, 2018.