Public Art Fund Talks: Paul Anthony Smith

Join us for a conversation between artist Paul Anthony Smith and Public Art Fund Assistant Curator Jenée-Daria Strand on July 16th, as they discuss Melodies from a running spring, the artist’s first public art exhibition in the Northeastern US, on view across 300 JCDecaux bus shelters in New York, Chicago, and Boston. The exhibition presents nine new grayscale photographic portraits that subvert mainstream representations of Jamaica and the Caribbean diaspora.

During the talk, Smith will reflect on the conceptual framework behind Melodies from a running spring, the connections between photography and ceramic practice, and the tension between visibility and erasure in public space. The conversation will explore the role of grayscale as a counterpoint to the saturated aesthetics of tourism, and how Smith’s images open space for fragmented memory, ambiguity, and new imaginings of the Caribbean. Rendered through Smith’s distinctive picotage technique—a method of perforating the photographic surface by hand—the works resist romanticized portrayals of the region and instead offer textured, multidimensional images shaped by memory, identity, and displacement.

Attend in person at Jack Shainman Gallery (46 Lafayette St). The talk will be followed by a reception. Registration is required, and capacity is limited. Capacity is first come, first served so please arrive early. Your registration does not guarantee entry.

Accessibility:

Email Gabriela López Dena, Associate Curator of Public Practice, at glopez@publicartfund.org with questions and requests for accessibility.

Paul Anthony Smith (b. Jamaica, 1988) creates paintings and picotage on pigment prints that explore the artist’s autobiography, as well as issues of identity within the African diaspora. Referencing both W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness and Franz Fanon’s theory of diasporic cultural confusions caused by colonialism, Smith alludes to fences, borders, and barriers to conceal and alter his subjects and landscapes. Smith’s practice celebrates the rich and complex histories of the post-colonial Caribbean and its people. Memory, migration and home are central to Smith’s work, which probes questions of hybrid identities between worlds old and new. Smith’s layered picotage is often patterned in the style of Caribbean breeze block fences and modernist architectural elements that function as veils, meant both to obscure and to protect Smith’s subjects from external gaze. While photography typically functions as a way in which to reveal and share information, Smith’s picotage has a concealing and purposefully perplexing effect. Forcing these nuanced diasporic histories into a singular picture plane, Smith encourages layers of unease within these outwardly jovial portraits. Picotage serves as an access point as Smith interrogates which elements of identity are allowed to pass through the complexities of borders and migration.