Alexandria Smith is an American mixed media visual artist based in London and New York City. She is currently the head of painting at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...

. Smith was a co-organizer of the collective Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter from 2016 to 2017. The collective, which consists of over 100 black women artists, held a public event at the

New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Sch ...

in NYC in 2016. Smith was quoted as saying, "I was in the company of women who wanted to use their gifts to instigate change, to let our humanity be seen and heard despite what others may believe. I know our work is not done and that this collective will continue to bring about healing and work against the grain in other iterations at other institutions. I look forward to continuing to help carry that torch. Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter has re-instilled in me a belief in our abilities as Black women artists to be nurturing, compassionate, genuine, and powerful by any means necessary." Smith earned her BFA in Illustration from Syracuse University, MA in Art Education from New York University and MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons The New School for Design.

Selected exhibitions

Throughout her career, Smith has had solo exhibitions at the

Queens Museum The Queens Museum, formerly the Queens Museum of Art, is an art museum and educational center located in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in the borough of Queens in New York City, United States. The museum was founded in 1972, and has among its pe ...

, Boston University's Stone Gallery, and The Union for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE. ''Monuments To An Effigy'', Smith's 2019 exhibition at the

, focused on the

Old Town of Flushing Burial Ground Old Town of Flushing Burial Ground is a historic cemetery located in Flushing, Queens, New York City. It was established in 1840 and known as The Olde Towne of Flushing Burial Ground. It was the result of Cholera and Smallpox epidemics in 1840 a ...

, which was a cemetery for African Americans and Native Americans during the 1800s and paved over by the Park Department in the 1930s. Smith's project centered around remembering the women buried at this site through music, poetry and installation, as only four graves were marked, and all of them men. Try a Little Tenderness, Smith's 2017 exhibition at The Union, consisted of paintings about Black Identity and the female body. Smith has an upcoming solo exhibition and site-specific commission for July 2021 titled ''Memoirs of a Ghost Girlhood: a Black Girl’s Window'' at the Courier Museum (Manchester, New Hampshire).

Awards and residencies

* Queens Museum/Jerome Foundation Fellowship (2018/19) * Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant * Virginia A. Myers Fellowship at the University of Iowa * Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship (2013–2015) * Fountainhead Residency * MacDowell Colony (2018) * Bemis Center (2018) * Yaddo * LMCC Process Space Residency * Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2015)

External links

Interview in the Huffington Post

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Alexandria 21st-century American women artists Living people Year of birth missing (living people)