SA Smythe is a multi-instrumentalist, critical theorist, and transmedia storyteller and educator conjuring cartographies of black belonging. Their practice choreographs sound compositions, light sculptures, poetics, performance, and archival ephemera. Smythe has work featured in collaborative and solo performance exhibitions, film and multimedia installations, poetry anthologies, and in literary and performance festivals. They are a 2023-24 MacDowell Fellow in Multimedia Installation and recipient of the 2022 Rome Prize for Modern Italian Studies. They’ve recently held artist/composer residencies and presented soundscape, poetry and performance work Villa Lena (Tuscany), VCCA, Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and FADO Performance Art Centre in Toronto, BASE (Milan), the Bell Gallery (Brown Arts Institute), Berkeley Arts Centre (Berkeley), The Recovery Plan and Palazzino indiano arte/CANGO in Florence, GXRLSCHOOL (Los Angeles), Kampnagel (Hamburg), Africa Writes Literary Festival (2016 coheadliner, London), the Mattatoio Museum (Rome), and The Church (New York). Together with fellow Rome Prize winner (Visual Art) and MacDowell alum (Performance) Autumn Knight, SA Smythe is 1/2 of the multiscalar performance collective THEYFXRST. They are Assistant Professor of Black Studies & the Archive at the University of Toronto, where they direct the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis and mannish waters atelier.
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
