Cauleen Smith

The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture commissions a new project from the multidisciplinary artist Cauleen Smith. 

Sometimes it takes time to see what’s really there.
Sometimes having a name for a thing helps us see it.
And sometimes the name for a thing renders it unseeable. Asterisms collects, arranges, projects, and draws connections between bodies unrelated, which together, create space and place. Objects from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Craft intermingle with objects from the artist’s own personal collection to create the mise-en-scene for cinemascapes that require an a curious and slow-looking eye. 

-Cauleen Smith 

ASTERISMS collects, arranges, projects, and draws connections between bodies unrelated, which together, create space and place. The artist intermingles objects from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Craft with objects from the artist’s own personal collection to create the mise-en-scene for cinemascapes that require a curious and slow-looking eye.

ASTERISMS is the first component to a three part body of work Smith is undertaking. The other two parts will unfold at the University of California: Irvine and Gallery TPW, Toronto.

Cauleen Smith is an interdisciplinary artist whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination. Rooted within the discourse of mid-twentieth century experimental film, Smith draws equally from the tactics of structuralism, third world cinema, and science fiction in an attempt to make things that nod to these references while offering a phenomenological experience for spectators and participants.

Smith's films, objects, and installations have been featured in group exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Houston Contemporary Art Museum; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art; Yerba Buena Center for Arts; the New Museum, and Liepzig and Berlin. Smith has had solo shows at The Kitchen, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Threewalls, Chicago, and Women & Their Work, Austin, TX.

Prior to receiving her 2014 Grants to Artists award, Smith's film Drylongso (1998) won Best Feature Award from Urbanworld Film Festival and the Pan-African Film Festival, Los Angeles. Smith was the recipient of a Creative Audio Archive Research, Experimental Sound Studio Residency (2011), a National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, Artist Award (2012), a Washington Park Arts Incubator, Arts and Public Life Residency (2013), and a 3Arts Award (2013).

This exhibition is supported in part by the The Regional Arts & Culture Council.