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Black Wonder and Rainbows

Shinique Smith is known for her monumental fabric sculptures and abstract paintings of calligraphy and collage. Born to a young fashion designer who is also a visionary thinker, Smith was exposed to an array of inspirational, childhood experiences, that include chanting with his holiness the Dalai Lama, attending the fashion shows in New York and Paris and studying ballet, piano and visual art from the age of four years. Smith attended the famed Baltimore School for the Arts, where she began honing her hand through life drawing and tagging with a local graffiti crew. Smith’s personal histories and belongings intertwine with thoughts of the vast nature of ‘things’ that we consume, cherish, gift, and discard and how these objects resonate on intimate and social scales. Over the last twenty years, Smith has gleaned visual poetry from clothing and explored concepts of ritual using breath, bunding and calligraphy as tools toward abstraction. Her layered works range from palm-sized bundled microcosms to monolithic bales to massive chaotic paintings that contain vibrant and carefully collected mementos from her life. Smith’s practice operates at the convergence of consumption and spiritual sanctuary, balancing forces and revealing connections across space and time, race, gender, and place to suggest the possibility of new worlds.

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This lecture is part of WONDER: Human Experience and the Arts | June 6-9, 2024

As a museum complex featuring visual and performing arts alongside circus history and a Gilded Age mansion, all situated on a bayfront campus, The Ringling is truly a site filled with wonder. This interdisciplinary symposium explores wonder as a source of creative inspiration, artistic medium, and physical and social well-being. Learn more about the WONDER Symposium

Wonder at The Ringling is supported by a generous gift by FORE