Shinique Smith - Under the Influence New York Wednesday, March 4, 2015 | Phillips
  • Provenance

    James Cohan Gallery, New York

  • Artist Biography

    Shinique Smith

    American • 1971

    In 2005, Shinique Amie Smith was among the 35 artists chosen for The Studio Museum in Harlem’s Frequency, an exhibition that continued the tradition of identifying a new generation of black artists that the museum had initiated nearly five years earlier with the groundbreaking show Freestyle. Exhibited next to the work of other emerging artists such as Nick Cave, Xaviera Simmons and Hank Willis Thomas, Shinique’s bale sculpture composed of second-hand clothing gained her critical attention. Ever since, she has made installations incorporating materials collected from communities and thrift shops, notably clothes, but also toys and other ephemera.

    Smith was inspired to make sculpture from clothing after reading an article of how a shirt given by a woman in Manhattan to a local thrift store, made its way to a bale of used clothing and eventually was bought in Africa. While retaining the associations, Smith subsumes the material into a composition by tying the textiles together in cubes, bundles and dense assemblages.

     Exploring the connections and values we ascribe to objects, Smith addresses questions of abstraction, all the while probing how her material has both personal meaning, as well as social and cultural significance.

    View More Works

277

Mamificent

2007
Clothing, climbing rope, stool, plastic, doll, ribbon and carpet
Dimensions variable

Estimate
$5,000 - 7,000 

Sold for $6,250

Contact Specialist
Kate Bryan
Head of Day Sale
New York
+ 1 212 940 1267

Under the Influence

New York Auction 4 March 2015 11am