Strand Gallery
November 24, 2018 - January 13, 2019
Opening Reception Saturday, November 24, 2018
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Artist talk at 6:30 PM
Kaneem Smith
Captive Sojourn and the Indefinite
Kaneem Smith’s exhibition, Captive Sojourn and the Indefinite, explores the tumultuous relationship between trade, consumption, and commodities. Referencing Galveston’s location on a natural port in the Gulf of Mexico, and its historical and contemporary ties to the exchange of goods and labor, her installation contemplates the trade of natural materials, specifically cotton and coffee through textiles, such as burlap used for import/export purposes. Smith draws inspiration from a familial and historical standpoint of personal experience and the human condition. Her exploration of three-dimensional form incorporates subtle psychological ideas of corruption and its lingering effects on human anthropology and American history. As a mixed media artist and sculptor with a background in fibers, these concepts run a complex thread throughout her body of work. Smith’s exhibition challenges viewers to contemplate global concerns of ethical trade, the West’s over-consumption of natural resources, and colonialist commodification of underprivileged producers and their products.
Kaneem Smith is an artist and educator based in Houston, TX. During her undergraduate art education, she studied at the Maryland Institute, College of Art and at Rice University before receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University. Among her many accomplishments, exhibitions, awards, and residencies, Smith was the recipient of a visual arts fellowship through The Hungarian Multicultural Center Artists and Writers Residency Program in Hungary (2003), an Edward F. Albee Residency Grant (2005), Vermont Studio Center Fellowships (2006) (2008), and a Visual Arts Fellowship from the Creative Capital Foundation in New York (2008). Smith also received studio fellowships for the Atelierhaus Hilmsen Residency for Artists and Professionals in Germany (2010) (2012). In 2015 Smith co-organized the 2015 Texas Sculpture Symposium in Lubbock, TX, with featured Keynote speaker and distinguished visual artist Judy Pfaff and San Antonio sculptor Ken Little. In 2017, she received a visual artist grant award in sculpture from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and received a Houston Artadia Award through Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue. Smith exhibits with Devin Borden Gallery in Houston.
artadia.org/artist/kaneem-smith
