Exhibition: SMITH (FR)

Over the years, French visual artist SMITH has crafted a constellation of works — a personal cosmogony that explores his own origins, the evolution of his environment and communities, and the diverse universes he’s traversed and depicted, this collection form Dami. Primarily lens-based and deeply research-driven, SMITH’s photographs and films explore transformations—both his own and the world’s. His work is anchored in a dialogue between the self—humans—and others: non-humans, equally alive and vibrant.          

For NOUA, SMITH unveils a new chapter of this cosmos, titled Imago. Focused on our experience of the world, SMITH invites us to conceive it through both thought and body. In Imago, gestures, movements, and actions pave the way to another level of reality. It’s about leaving behind violence and injustice to imagine, to dream of new ways of being in the world. We return to it, with one persistent question: how do we live alongside our world?

Through SMITH’s thermal camera, we witness the heat radiating from various matter which would be normally invisible to the naked eye. Warmer areas glow in vivid hues of yellow, orange, and red, while cooler regions are cast in deeper shades of purple, blue, and black.

In collaboration with Norwegian architect Sami Rintala, Imago invites the viewer to take a similar path, to wander through the space and move beyond it, focusing on the infinitely small and the infinitely vast; to direct our attention to all things and beings, and to leave with the conviction that we can do better.

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As an artist-researcher, SMITH experiments with and explores the links between contemporary humanity and its boundary figures - ghosts, mutants, hybrids - engaging his own body and that of his collaborators - writers, astronauts, shamans, engineers, designers, performers or composers - in interdisciplinary projects. 

His work (exhibitions, films, performances, conferences) is regularly presented in the form of solo exhibitions, notably at the Rencontres d'Arles, the Palais de Tokyo, the Centre Pompidou as well as China, Korea and Latin America (Chile, Uruguay, Mexico). Several monographs are devoted to his work, including "Löyly" (Filigranes, 2013), Valparaiso (André Frère, 2019), "Désidération (prologue)" (Textuel, 2021), "Desiderea Nuncia" (Palais books, 2021, Book Prize at the Rencontres d'Arles). SMITH is also the author of several short films, including "Spectrographies" (2013 - with Mathieu Amalric, Dominique Blanc, Florence Thomassin, Bernard Stiegler); "TRAUM" (2015), or "Les Apocalyptiques" (2019). 

SMITH is represented by Christophe Gaillard gallery and Modds agency in Paris. He is currently an associate artist at La Filature - Scène Nationale in Mulhouse, and laureate of the 2023 Villa Albertine in partnership with the writer Marie NDiaye.

 

Dr. Taous Dahmani (she/her) is a London-based French, British and Algerian art historian, writer and curator specializing in photography. Dahmani curated the 2022 Louis Roederer Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles in France. In October 2024, she curated two themed group exhibitions at the Jaou Photo Biennale in Tunis, Tunisia. The following month, she unveiled a solo exhibition of SMITH at NOUA in Bodø, Norway and curated ‘Anastasia Samoylova: Adaptation’ at the Saatchi Gallery.

Her writing is featured in photobooks published by Loose Joints, Textuel and Chose Commune, as well as in magazines like The British Journal of Photography, FOAM, GQ, Aperture, Camera Austria and 1000 Words Magazine. She is the associate editor of the award winning book Shining Lights. Black women Photographers in 1980’s-90’s Britain (MACK/Autograph ABP, 2024). She joined LCC (UAL) as an Associate Lecturer in January 2023.