Smith (stylized as SMITH, née Dorothée Smith; born 1985) is a French visual artist, known for explorations in the matter of gender, transgender and absence.

Early life and education

Born as Dorothée Smith in 1985 in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. Smith has a degree in 2010 from the . Smith has also studied at the

Paris-Sorbonne University Paris-Sorbonne University (also known as Paris IV; french: Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV) was a public research university in Paris, France, active from 1971 to 2017. It was the main inheritor of the Faculty of Humanities of the Universit ...

(2007), and the

Aalto University Aalto University ( fi, Aalto-yliopisto; sv, Aalto-universitetet) is a public research university located in Espoo, Finland. It was established in 2010 as a merger of three major Finnish universities: the Helsinki University of Technology, the ...

(2009) in Helsinki. Smith was in an artist residency at Le Fresnoy (National Studio of Contemporary Arts) in

Tourcoing Tourcoing (; nl, Toerkonje ; vls, Terkoeje; pcd, Tourco) is a city in northern France on the Belgian border. It is designated municipally as a commune within the department of Nord. Located to the north-northeast of Lille, adjacent to Roubai ...

, from 2010 to 2012.

Work

Smith's initial artistic medium was photography; later installations include a variety of media. His work, both plastic and theoretical, is now described as "indisciplinary". Smith has engaged in collaborations with scientific and philosophical research teams and labs - such as the

French National Centre for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,63 ...

in 2012, and the IRAP (Institut de recherche en astrophysique et planétologie) in 2018. In the interactive installation "Cellulairement" (2012), a thermal capture device in the installation space was connected to an electronic chip implanted in Smith's body, allowing Smith to feel the presence of viewers. Many of Smith's works explore questions of gender and personal identity. The idea of transition is a central element of his artistic practice. French photographer and photography specialist Arnaud Claass wrote about Smith's work, in the preface of Smith's first monographic book: "There is no mystery; SMITH's approach to the visible, at once luminarist and dark, is valid as an image of the uncertainty of sexual roles. Questions of gender, a current in philosophy over the last twenty years or more, occupy an important place in the intellectual development of mith'soeuvre." His most recent projects are "Spectrographies" (2014), "TRAUM" (2015–18), "Saturnium" (2017) and "Desideration" (2019). They were presented during cinema festivals in Europe, at the Centre Pompidou and Théâtre de la Cité Internationale (Paris), at the CND (Pantin), at the Dance Museum (Rennes) and at the CCN-ICI (Montpellier). SMITH's visual works were exhibited as solo shows at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie (Arles), at the Filles du Calvaire gallery and Palais de Tokyo (Paris), at the Photographic Museum of Helsinki (Finland), as well as several countries in Europe (Sweden, Luxembourg, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, Switzerland), Asia (China, Cambodia, South Korea) and Latin America (Mexico, Chile, Uruguay).

Publications

His first book, "Löyly" (Filigranes) was published in 2013, followed by "Saturnium" (Actes Sud) in 2017, a long-length interview by art historian Christine Ollier in 2017, "Juste entre nous" (André Frère), the opera booklet "Astroblème" (Filigranes), and the traval-photobook "Valparaiso" (André Frère). * Dorothée Smith (préf. Arnaud Claass), Löyly & Sub Limis, Le Château d’Eau, 26 January 2011 () * Dorothée Smith et Dominique Baqué, Löyly, Filigranes, 14 November 2013, 192 p. () * SMITH, Antonin Tri Hoang, Jean-Philippe Uzan, Claire Moulène et Alain Fleischer, Saturnium - Conte musical et photographique, Musicales Actes Sud, 6 September 2017, 68 p. (ISBN 3149028113723) * Christine Ollier, SMITH, André Frère Éditions, 10 November 2017, 128 p. () * SMITH, Astroblème, Coffret "1+2 L'origine manquante", Filigranes ()

Solo exhibitions

* 2008–2009: galerie AnnexOne, galerie Dask, Copenhague * 2009: ''Nuit Blanche'', Chapelle de la maternité Sainte Croix, Metz, avec une performance de

Sir Alice ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as ...

* 2011–2015: ''Löyly'', 4th festival Photo Phnom Penh, Institut Français du Cambodge (commissariat de Christian Caujolle); , Brago, Portugal; Festival Photofolies, Rodez; The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finlande * 2011: ''Sub Limis'', galerie du Château d'eau de Toulouse, Toulouse * 2012–2013: "Hear us marching up slowly",

Rencontres d'Arles The Rencontres d’Arles (formerly called ''Rencontres internationales de la photographie d’Arles'') is an annual summer photography festival founded in 1970 by the Arles photographer Lucien Clergue, the writer Michel Tournier and the historia ...

; Photospring Festival of Caochangdi, Chine (commissaire : Didier de Faÿs) * 2015: ''Entre deux fantômes'', Pavillon Vendôme, Clichy * 2016: ''Давайте Мечтать'', galerie les Filles du Calvaire, Paris * 2017: ''TRAUM'', Patricia Conde Galeria, Mexico, Mexique; Institut Chorégraphique International, Montpellier (commissaire : Christian Rizzo) * 2018: ''Spectrographies'', San José foto Festival, Uruguay

Selected works

* 2009 ''Löyly'', series of photographs * 2010 ''Sub Limis'', series of photographs * 2011 ''C19H28O2 (Agnès)'', video installation * 2012 ''Spectrographies'', interactive installation * 2015 ''TRAUM'', transdisciplinary project (danse, cinema, sculpture, photography, performance) * 2017 ''Saturnium'', series of photographs

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith 1985 births New media artists French mixed-media artists Living people Artists from Paris BioArtists Transgender artists Non-binary artists Transgender non-binary people