‘Like a puzzle’: Artist in Hong Kong debut likens city to her 3D paintings

When you walk into Gagosian Gallery in Hong Kong, you’re greeted by a painting titled The Wayfinders. In it two naked, armless primordial figures stand beneath two moons and bend over a column of black discs, transfixed by the flames emerging from the portals.

Speaking at her debut solo exhibition in Asia, the New York artist Alexandria Smith says she hopes visitors will be equally intrigued by the strange worlds that she’s created.

“I have always been fascinated by cross cultures, fables, myths and how the world is created. That’s a collective fate that we all share. There’s an origin story for every culture, so I always think about what is the origin story of the work I am making,” she says.

The exhibition, titled “Stirrings of a Polymorphous Bloom”, comprises 15 new works, some in mixed media and others on paper.

Her worlds leap out at you. The meticulous layering of materials creates textured and three-dimensional pieces that feature fantastical, part-human creatures which seem half-formed.

In Starchile In The Wild, for example, a giant, faceless creature with female breasts and a fiery halo around its head is walking towards a star.

It is surrounded by what Smith calls “ancestor heads” in the air that look like a cross between a human head and a speech bubble. Together, the ancestor heads and the creature are on a journey together towards the North Star, a symbol of hope and freedom in African-American culture.

Smith, an assistant professor in painting and printmaking at the Yale School of Art, was co-organiser of the collective Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter from 2016-17, and art is part of her activism.

“Sometimes I’m actively protesting in the streets. Other times, I’m using education to help my students imagine to be more thoughtful and think about their relationship to the world,” she says.

Collective memory matters deeply to her, she says, as she believes that the past informs the present and the future, and she chooses to express herself through a style inspired by surrealism and mythology.

Smith explains that the recurring hybrid alien-human figures, often with their body parts such as eyes, limbs, nipples, kneecaps and nails emphasised, are “on a journey toward selfhood”.

“They are figuring out who they are and how they are existing in this world that I have created,” she says. “They are missing [limbs] in the ways we think about the body, but they are not necessarily incomplete. I try to think more deeply about what wholeness looks like and what it means.”

The shift from creating with flat, traditional oils on canvas to working in three dimensions came after Smith saw a show at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 2019.

“In the show, they had copies of dimensional paintings that would sit next to the actual painting for the visually impaired. It was an ‘Aha’ moment for me because I realised this was a way for me to bring my paintings into three-dimensional forms through layered wood panels,” she says.

“My dad was visually impaired in the last decade of his life, so I was thinking about him and his experience in the work.

“If it was flat, he wouldn’t be able to understand the forms unless someone explains it to him. But with dimensions, he could feel the work and understand the different relationship that was just as intimate as art.”

In Heft of the Lumens, there are dimples on the flowers that make them look like strawberries. She also paints waves so that it looks like a figure is half immersed in the water.

The mixed-media artist has never taken paint and brush and gone right to the canvas or wood panel. She always starts with drawing.

“All of my ideas come from drawing. Drawing is my comfort zone. It’s where I feel the most free,” she says. “Drawing becomes an initial structure and then I depart from that and create three-dimensional paintings. But I’m not trying to make an exact replica.”

Smith says she draws inspiration from literature, animation, cartoons and comics.

Of visiting Hong Kong for the first time, she explained the city and her works share a lot of common features. “Hong Kong feels like my paintings. It feels like a puzzle. It feels like I’m being transported every time I go to another level, just like entering into different portals. It’s incredible,” she says.

“Alexandria Smith: Stirrings of a Polymorphous Bloom”, Gagosian Hong Kong, 7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Tues-Sat, 11am-7pm. Until January 13, 2024.