Cauleen Smith
Cauleen Smith
Cauleen Smith is an interdisciplinary artist whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination. Operating in multiple materials and arenas, Smith roots her work firmly within the discourse of mid-twentieth-century experimental film. Drawing from structuralism, third world cinema, and science fiction, she makes things that deploy the tactics of activism in service of ecstatic social space and contemplation.
Recent solo exhibitions include the Whitney Museum of American Art (2020); MASS MoCA (2019); ICA Philadelphia (2018); Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (forthcoming 2021). A two-person exhibition at San Francisco Museum of Art is currently on view. Smith’s films, an installation and a performance were showcased at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2019).
Smith is the recipient of numerous awards including the Rockefeller Media Arts Award, Creative Capital award for Film/Video, Chicago 3Arts Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Chicago Expo Artadia Award, Rauschenberg Residency, Herb Alpert Awards in the Arts in Film and Video, United States Artists Award. She was the inaugural recipient of the Ellsworth Kelly Award in 2016, and is the 2020 recipient of The Studio Museum in Harlem’s Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize.
She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. She has a BA in Creative Arts from the San Francisco State University and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theater Film and Television. Smith is represented by Kate Werble Gallery and Corbett vs. Dempsey.
