The Sculptural Language of Shinique Smith

Los Angeles–based artist Shinique Smith is renowned for her distinctive visual language, creating monumental fabric sculptures and expressive paintings that blend calligraphy and collage. Her dynamic compositions, characterised by frenetic forms and layered materials, evoke memories and connections that transcend space, time, race, and gender, suggesting the possibility of new worlds.

Beneath the Veil, 2025 acrylic, found textiles, artist's custom designed fabric and collage on wood panel. Courtesy the Artist & Rele Gallery

A recipient of both the Academy of Arts & Letters Purchase Prize and the prestigious Joan Mitchell Prize, Smith’s kaleidoscopic practice is as expansive in vision as it is in reach. Her career gained momentum with Frequency, the Studio Museum in Harlem’s seminal 2005 exhibition, where she exhibited alongside contemporaries such as Nick Cave and Hank Willis Thomas. Since then, Smith has continued to push creative boundaries, including a collaboration with the late “Godmother of Rap” Nikki Giovanni on a survey for the National Portrait Gallery and MFA Boston.

In 2024, she reached another milestone with a landmark exhibition at the Ringling Museum, where her large-scale works were displayed in conversation with historic European art - foregrounding themes of Black femininity while exploring the universality of human experience. 

As she entered 2025, Smith’s work featured in Poetics of Dimensions at the ICA San Francisco, and Social Fabrics: Magic & Memory, a two-person show with Marcellina Akpojotor at the Nigerian-run Rele Gallery Los Angeles. 

Torque (view from below), 2024. Custom printed and hand-painted textiles, found hubcaps, hula-hoops, ribbon, rope, yarn and sound collage. Courtesy the Artist and Newfields/Indianapolis Museum of Art.

As the year progresses, she has 2 more major exhibitions on show. Currently on now is By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection, and until June, her solo installation TORQUE will be on display at the Indianapolis Museum of Art Galleries at Newfields. This multi-sensory exhibition weaves together printed and painted textiles, found objects, and the sounds of motion and speed - an homage to Indianapolis’s storied racing culture. 

Despite preparations for a busy year ahead, Shinique has answered some interview questions for us...

(...)

Want to read more of this article?
We are proud to be a subscriber-funded publication with members in 185 countries. We know our readership is passionate about textiles, so we invite you to help us preserve and promote the stories, memories, and histories that fabric holds. Your support allows us to publish our magazine, and also ‘what's on’ information, and subscription interviews, reviews, and long-read articles in our online blog. 

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? CLICK HERE TO ACCESS CONTENT

OR...to continue reading….


Magazine subscribers automatically get free access to all our online content. We send the access code by email with the publication of each issue. You will also find it on the envelope containing your magazine. Please note the access code changes every issue.

-

Image Credits:

Lead Image:  Mitumba Deity II, 2018/2023. Clothing, vintage textiles, ribbon and rope, turquoise and aventurine beads, pearls, blown glass and fabric garlands, and grandmother Vernessia Smith’s antique dresser. Courtesy the Artist & Rele Gallery.

All other images as credited in the captions.