In Conversation: Emily Mae Smith
Emily Mae Smith, Poetry (Toy in Blood), 2022. Oil on linen, 67 × 51 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York. Photo: Charles Benton.
UT alum Emily Mae Smith (BFA ’02) joins Visual Arts Center Director Max Fields for a conversation about Smith’s recent exhibition Emily Mae Smith x René Magritte, the accompanying publication, and the underlying themes that appear throughout her oeuvre. The conversation aims to provide an outline of Smith’s development as an artist, starting with her time at UT and her early career in New York, and continuing to the present day.
Please note that this conversation is geared towards UT students pursuing an education in the arts.
Open to the public. RSVP required.
About the artist:
Emily Mae Smith’s sly, humorous, and riveting compositions nod to art historical movements such as Symbolism and Art Nouveau, though with a distinctly 21st-century spin. Her genre-defying paintings speak through a vocabulary of signs and symbols, addressing timely subjects including gender, class, and violence. Smith’s paintings tackle art history’s phallocentric myths and create imagery for subjectivities absent in visual culture, specifically the feminist perspective.
Emily Mae Smith was born in 1979 in Austin, Texas. She currently lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: Magritte Museum, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels (2024); Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (2023); Pond Society, Shanghai (2023); Petzel Gallery, New York (2022); Perrotin, Paris (2021); Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels (2021); Simone Subal Gallery, New York (2020, 2017); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2020); Marion Art Gallery, Rockefeller Arts Center, Fredonia (2020); Perrotin, Tokyo (2019); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford (2019); Le Consortium Museum, Dijon (2018); Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (2018); Perrotin (with Genesis Belanger), New York (2018); SALTS (with Adam Henry), Basel (2017); Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels (2016); Mary Mary, Glasgow (2016); and Laurel Gitlen, New York (2015). Select group exhibitions include: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford (2024); Blanton Museum of Art, Austin (2024); Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas (2023); The Warehouse, Dallas (2023); Petzel Gallery, New York (2023); The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2022); The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles (2022); 58th October Salon, Belgrade Biennale, Belgrade (2021); Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus (2021); Arsenal Contemporary, New York (2021); Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland (2020); Public Art Fund, New York (2020); Petzel Gallery, New York (2020); Hauser & Wirth, New York (2019); Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal (2019); Gio Marconi, Milan (2019); Peter Freeman Inc., New York (2018); Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2018); Lumber Room, Portland (2017); König Galerie, Berlin (2016); The Moore Building, Miami (2015); and Skirball Museum, Cincinnati (2014).
Smith’s work is included in collections such as Albertina, Vienna, Austria; Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal, Canada; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio; The Consortium Museum, Dijon, France; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California; Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Powerlong Art Museum, Shanghai, China; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; Zuzeum Art Centre, Riga, Latvia.