SA Smythe is a multi-instrumentalist, storyteller/memory worker, transdisciplinary educator and critical theorist concerned with the thrival of our relations beyond every border. Smythe’s transmedia practice weaves black trans poetics, sound composition, performance, light sculpture, and archival ephemera. Their collaborative and solo works have been developed at international artist-composer residencies and featured in exhibitions and multimedia installations, experimental film, poetry anthologies, and at literary and performance festivals including: the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, FADO Performance Art Centre, and the Banff Centre in Canada; BASE Milano, Palazzino indiano arte/CANGO (Florence), Mattatoio Museum (Rome), and Villa Lena Foundation in Italy; Kampnagel (Hamburg); Africa Writes Literary Festival (co-headliner, London [UK]); and GXRLSCHOOL Los Angeles, Virginia Centre for the Creative Arts, The Church (New York), and the Lindemann Performing Arts Center (Brown Arts Institute) in the States. They were a 2023-24 MacDowell Fellow in Multimedia Installation and recipient of the 2022 Rome Prize for Modern Italian Studies. Currently based between Tkarón:to and Italy, Smythe works at University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information as Assistant Professor of Black Studies & the Archive and Director of the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis.
Program
In Conversation: Rudy Loewe and SA Smythe
Toronto Biennial 2024 artist Rudy Loewe is joined by transmedia artist and UofT professor of black studies and the archive, SA Smythe for a conversation, which brings together practices and approaches that are rooted in Black queer and trans histories, storytelling, and belonging within and outside of the institution and across the diaspora. Within their […]
May 2
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Partners
Program
Difference of a Shared Spirit
Storyteller and multi-instrumentalist Olivia Shortt and transmedia artist and UofT professor of black studies and the archive SA Smythe are invited to collaborate with 2024 TBA exhibition artist Maria Hupfield in relation to her commission The Supernatural Powers of Fabulous Panther (Biimskojiwan). Working alongside one another, each performer breathes life into Maria’s work, expanding the […]
September 21
4:00pm – 5:00pm
