Sunny A. Smith
2021 Eureka Fellow
Sunny A. Smith (they/them) is motivated by a sense of accountability for harms caused by ancestors. Their artistic practice engages the cultural phenomenon of historical reenactment as the ritualized performance of unresolved trauma. Haunted by the past, their activism takes form in a queered materiality that summons the ghosts of history/herstory/hxstory, tracing alternate lineages, transmitting different storylines, and offering hopeful re-workings. Through apprenticeships with culture bearers across craft traditions, they create sculptures with curative potential, serving as keys for time travel and the possibility of healing past, present, and future generations. Smith has exhibited work in solo and group exhibitions at venues, including P.S.1/MOMA, Palais de Tokyo, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, MASS MoCA The Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs, NY; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT; The Arts Club of Chicago; S!GNAL Center for Contemporary Art, Sweden; and the California College of Arts’ Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, among many others. Smith has received awards and grants from United States Artists, the Arts Council England, the Public Art Fund, the Creative Work Fund, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Artadia, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Their work has been featured on Art:21 and PBS The Art Assignment. Smith participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and holds an MFA from Yale University, a BFA from Parsons School of Design, and a BA from Eugene Lang College. Recent projects include Common Good, produced with the Cambridge Arts Council and shown at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University; Models for a System, a collaboration with Christina Zetterlund at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco; Be Not Still at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa, California; and Two of Wands with Adam Milner at The Sculpture Center in Cleveland. Smith is currently working on a long-term project exploring early American colonial legacies through the lens of animism, witchcraft, and ritual practices of ancestral lineage repair which will manifest in group shows in Plymouth, Massachusetts and Plymouth, UK and a solo exhibition at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco in 2020. *Artist biography at time of award.
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