Who’s the center of it all?
By Karen Moe
Pepto-Pops (2020) in Ray Smith's Studio, Cuernavaca, Mexico. Photo Courtesy of the artist.
Mirrors have been central to Mexican/American artist Ray Smith’s work since he and his wife, Maricruz Smith, bought their house in Cuernavaca, Mexico in 1990. Smith told me how:
Cuernavaca represents an important part of Mexico’s history for over 3000 years. Every one of the muralists had studios and made murals in Cuernavaca and I bought a barn with mirrored walls. As time went by, every painting I made in the room had been reflected in the mirrors and eventually the paintings became mirrors and the mirrors became paintings. I see both now as the same. [1]
From his studio of mirrors in the historic center of Mexico’s great muralists of the early twentieth century, not only did Smith’s paintings and mirrors begin their conversation with one another, the artist continues the legacy of political mural-making in Mexico, a tradition that can be punned as ‘murality,’ an art praxis of turning our current state of morality back at us and beseeching: look.
Ray Smith Scream (2017). La Tallera, Cuernavaca, Mexico. Photo by Karen Moe.
Along with David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera was one of los tres grandes (the big three) who were commissioned by the Revolutionary Government “to celebrate the Mexican people’s potential to craft the nation’s history.” [2] Diego Rivera’s Carnaval de la Vida Mexico (1936) is one of the murals in the permanent collection at Mexico City’s Bellas Artes. If one sits and immerses themselves in Carnaval, they will witness the revolutionary consciousness of the artist’s contemporaneity. Along with—and perhaps because of—the agenda of propelling the Mexican people beyond centuries of exploitation by the Spanish conquistadors and the accelerating capitalist greed from the North, the mural documents the reasons for the revolution more than the gains: it shows us why The Revolution was necessary in the first place in order to never be forgotten.
A triptych, Carnaval de la Vida Mexico is framed by the living legacy of colonialism that continues to threaten any contemporary gain in social justice. Dominating the first panel is the quintessential ‘white man,’ an archetype of Mr. Capitalism who stands upon his foundation of European Imperialism and the stolen land of Mexico with its irresistible riches. His big head is arrogantly tilted, sporting an expression of smug avarice; predatory—albeit perfect aligned—teeth conjure the keys of a cash register that are topped off by a Hitlerian mustache that never escapes its doppelgänger farce of Charlie Chaplin.
On the other side of the triptych, in panel number three, stands the Caucasian woman, stern, self-righteous and tight-lipped, the tilt of her head corresponding to that of her male counter-part, forming a frame that is sinister in its symmetry. Scrawny arms akimbo, she is impervious to empathy as she stands triumphantly mirroring her male cohort’s smugness, a pillar of her colonializing community. The center-panel, as the key that will determine the survival of Mexico’s revolutionary gains, is an Indigenous man, eyes vacant, mounted above his people on the horse of the conquistadors, wearing the uniform of the enemy; he is the turncoat, while his people continue to resist beneath him. The Indigenous-man-cum-conquistador is sneering and there is an ambivalence as to whom the sneer is for: the people he has betrayed or those who have forced him to do so.
Diego Rivera Carnaval de la Vida Mexico (1936).
Skulls mock. Another Indigenous man wears a pre-Hispanic mask that has infleshed his rage; an imperial ass slow-dances with an Indigenous woman and, perhaps the most disturbing character in the frame is a child who punctuates the bottom right as the possibility of a full stop, face soft with an innocent ‘Oh’, defending himself with a flimsy branch, and wearing the hat of a joker. The mural calls out: which way will this carnival go? Paradoxically, Carnaval de la Vida Mexico was painted in the midst of the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940), the president who implemented the reforms of the revolution by distributing land, making loans available to peasants, organizing workers’ and peasants’ confederations, and expropriating and nationalizing foreign-owned industries. [3]
Despite this context of hope, Carnaval de la Vida Mexico stands as a warning; it dramatizes the threat of return that always underlays projects of long-lasting egalitarian reforms. If one palimpsests Rivera’s mural onto the present, though, the artist’s warning has been, sadly, far from heeded.
Ray Smith El Narciso de Jesús (2017) detail. Photo by Karen Moe.
Ray Smith Scream (2017) detail. Photo by Karen Moe.
Almost one-hundred years later, in Smith’s mirrored murals, the call to the people to heed the threat to social justice is taken one step further: social subjects are both the painted and the paint and, within these cultural microcosms, we unwittingly paint ourselves. And yet, as the viewer becomes a literal part of the art, is our ability to stand back and read the morality of the mural impeded? Does this one-step-further bring us so close to what is being warned against that we find ourselves immersed in a point of no return? In Smith’s murals, we become the ironic embodiment of our own warning; our overt inclusion in the artist’s theatres of the absurd enact a nuevo-Narcissus; we are trapped within our lack of empathy and, with gazes glued to our own image, are blind to the aptly name big picture. We are cloistered in the small, the enclaves of Individualism, as we can’t tear ourselves away from our own self-importance in order to see.
The ideological reign of the Individual began innocently enough. Instigated by Adam Smith’s use of ‘liberal’ as a political term in The Wealth of Nations (1776), it was a doctrine allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way with the condition: “as long as he does not violate the laws of justice.” [4] Unfortunately, this key prerequisite of what can be seen as the oxymoronic “capitalism for the common good” has proven widely open to interpretation and rampant abuse. However, this new found freedom, regardless of its contemporary hypocrisies, continues today as the liberty to live the dream of becoming ‘the self-made man’—the ideal of Western Democracies that are founded in the illusion of equal opportunity.
Such a justifiable right has, unfortunately, resulted in the leveling mantra of free will for all, regardless of the lived realities of unequal access to this unquestioned pursuit of self-interest. In her book, Gore Capitalism, activist and intellectual Sayak Valencia extends this denial of the disparity of access to a free will and equal opportunity into the twenty-first century:
Neoliberal discourse presents globalization to society as a reality based in equality. In line with the dictum of equal access to everything, this discourse insists on the acceptance of the market as the only field that equalizes everything, precisely because it instills artificially-naturalized needs that drive consumption without distinction. [5]
Under the rule of what Valencia calls “neoliberalism’s ferocious logic,” the unquestioned belief in individual betterment is the driving force of a deregulated global market—one that is no longer fettered by such profit margin plagues as having a social conscience.
It is difficult to undermine the mythology of the self-made man, so ingrained is it in our cultural consciousness of what we are supposed to be. It is virtually impossible to dispute everyone’s right to pursue individual prosperity and happiness. ‘Everyone’ being the key word. Paradoxically, such undisputed rights and the subsequent myopic focus on individual well-being has resulted in the hyper-individualism that is necessary to drive contemporary consumer culture. We think we are free as we are trapped inside of ourselves and, as we consume whatever we ostensibly have a right to, we are malnourished by our own self-importance. In Smith’s mirrors, the viewer/social subject eagerly enters the frame for a ritual of self-worship, they activate the narrative of hyper-individualism of our neoliberal world and the artist not only turns narcissistic hierarchy on its head, he takes the piss.
Ray Smith Scream (2017) detail. Photo by Karen Moe.
Pepto-Pop (2020) in Ray Smith's Studio Cuernavaca, Mexico. Photo Courtesy of the artist.
With a gesture of mimetic homage to the inversion implicit in reflection, let’s flip chronology and begin at the most recent mirror paintings in Smith’s oeuvre: Pepto-Pop, human-sized works that come in handy at any elite party where one can voyeur upon themselves while, at the same time, serve as cheeky coffins.
In these works that sell like hotcakes for tens of thousands of American dollars, the viewer has become the sole representation. At Mexico City’s Zona MACO 2020, Pepto-Pop sold out and Smith had to race back to his Cuernavaca studio and pump out more for eager buyers. His garden became an assembly line where he sat vigil every evening attempting to keep the kamikaze ectsins from becoming a part of the drying oozes of paint, relentless little homages to the decomposition of the humane in humanity amidst the acceleration of the suzerainty of the self. When I asked Smith about the bugs, he related how:
Always bugs in Pepto-Pop pours! Some sink quickly to the bottom like mobsters with concrete foot wear. Others stick to a semi-dry surface crust and die a kinda roach motel death. The real nuisance are the snorkelers, half in half out. Mobster grave sites are only known to me. Roach motel guests usually dry up within a week and can be scratched off. The snorkelers force me to examine my forty years of aesthetic practice only to remember I’m just a punk so FUCK IT or DESTROY IT!!
Ray Smith Pepto-Pop Galería Estéreo, Zona Maco, 2020. Photo by Karen Moe.
Along with a few buried mobsters and the remains of half-in-half-out snorkelers, the viewer as subject is adorned by simultaneously scrumptious and sickening gestures of poured paint. Paradoxically, the praxis of the pouring is founded in Smith’s study of Japanese calligraphy. Calligraphy is both an art form and a means of communication where marks of cultural precision are painstakingly honed through the flow of velvety ink made of pine tree soot and vegetables. The precision of the brushes has been refined over centuries and calligraphers choose the hair, texture and size with a discretion that is akin to meditation. One is called to the art of calligraphy; it takes years of dedication to master; the marks emanate discretion and peace.
In sharp contrast, the ink used for the calligraphy of Pepto-Pop hails from the COMEX, the corporation that holds the monopoly on paint supply in Mexico and, like all corporations in Mexico—as is true of all corporations in a globalized world—is connected to the mafia. [6] There is no organic delicacy here: the base for Smith’s communicative material is alkyd enamel that is used for beautifying interior, exterior and industrial surfaces. The durability of the enamel is also most effective in covering up the dilapidation that is—in the Mexican context especially—a result of poverty. Along with the gloopy toxic pours, there are no delicate brushes in Smith’s necessary outdoor studio. Like the selfie-carnival that ensues when Pepto-Pops are unveiled and activated at elite art fairs, Smith’s calligraphy writes a culture run amuck.
Pepto-Pop (2020) in Ray Smith's Studio, Cuernavaca, Mexico. Photo Courtesy of the Artist.
And then there is the title, tell-tale as it references the satirical superficiality of pop-art along with its overt allusion to the household name of Pepto-Bismol. The brand name for Bismuth Subsalicylate, it can be presumed that the majority of us have taken the pink pill or sticky tablespoon-full to provide temporary relief from nausea, heartburn, indigestion and diarrhea. Smith told me how the name of the series originated in his first piece that came out in the unmistakable shade of Pepto-Bismol pink—art invariably talks back to its maker. The artist added pop to his pepto and told me how this symbolic addition of stomach-soothing fizz “could be an elixir to this fucking nausea.” As the self-obsessed swarm and thousands are forked out for these narcissistic coffins that so stylishly re-enact our demise, we are obliviously fed what the artist calls snake oil. “The paintings are the disease itself,” Smith proclaimed.
Ray Smith Pepto-Pop Galería Estéreo, Zona Maco, 2020. Photo by Karen Moe.
Where Pepto-Pop is a reductionist delving into cultural superficially, El Narciso de Jesús (2017)—created right after the 2016 doomsday election of Donald Trump—is a mirrored house of horrors. The location of this lurid scream in response to the normalizing freakshow in his other home country couldn’t have been more deserving. Smith’s epic to date was held at La Tallera in Cuernavaca, the workshop of David Alfaro Siqueiros, the most radical, irreverent and controversial of the great Mexican muralists. In this magnificent space with nine-meter ceilings, replete with a pully system and a groove in the floor where he could raise and lower his murals during the process of painting, Siqueiros created his final epic and the longest mural in the world: The March of Humanity (1971).
However, with the buoyancy of the Communist International lighting the way, Siqueiros’ was a much more hopeful time; the struggle that is dramatized in his march of humanity arrives at a Communist utopia. In contrast, Smith’s floor to ceiling installation dazzled as the Mexican sun poured in through the sky lights and reflected off of the mirrors to create a world that was, at first, deific; however, if one dug beneath their reflection, our demons surfaced.
La Tallera in Cuernavaca, the workshop of David Alfaro Siqueiros. Photo by Karen Moe.
Ray Smith at his installation El Narciso de Jesús (2017) at La Tallera. Photo by Karen Moe.
In our early 2017 interview, just after the election of Trump, Smith told me how:
There is nothing to laugh about these days. I would say scream, curse, bitch and moan until the last drop of blood. At this point, I am going to be about as cruel and vicious and vulgar as I can possibly be because that means I am being presidential.
The enraged artist expressed how we are all responsible for the current condition of our world, especially the people of his American homeland who can elect such an egomaniacal and dangerous president. As with the Pepto-Pops that were soon to come, through his use of mirrors, Smith provoked the narcissism of our contemporary age as exemplified by social media and its corresponding obsession with personal representation. Indeed, this addiction to the centrality of the self (and the corresponding obliviousness to the other) was demonstrated daily when witnessing the visitors’ responses to the work. When encountering El Narciso de Jesús, the aesthetic grandeur of the installation was the bait that aroused the irresistible urge to take a selfie. Through this act of initiating self-absorption that will instantly enter into the simulacratic world of social media, we are further implicated into the underside of contemporary Western culture. As we photograph ourselves as “I am here,” we are no longer: we exist in the parade of the incessant upkeep of our representations, a tautology of surfaces.
Ray Smith El Narciso de Jesús (2017) at La Tallera. Photo Credit Unknown.
Ray Smith El Narciso de Jesús (2017) detail. Photo by Karen Moe.
Ironically, though, unlike the more minimalist satire of Pepto-Pop, these instances of celebratory “Look where I am right now!” are backgrounded by rotting yowls that riff on Munch’s “Scream” and desperate crawling creatures that are abjectly adorned with splots of mud and grubby drips. Smith’s is an anti-cathedral, a space to revel in our oblivious suicide. Paradoxically, however, the monsters come at us through Pop Art “Bangs!,” their sinister insinuations accentuated by retro disguise as Warholian maws await the insertion of self-absorbed faces. Some of the frames were left empty and dedicated to a fleeting portrait of the viewer to momentarily keep company with their surrounding demons. Indeed, as an exquisite force-feeding, the viewer/global citizen becomes the connection between the suzerainty of the surface and the mutations that are bred when all substance is denied. [7]
In keeping with the times and Trump’s egomaniacal wall, running along the side of the El Narciso de Jesús installation was Scream, a series of mirror panels illustrated with images and tag-lines that read like the back and forth of an apocalyptic comic strip. Smith’s boundary is not arranged in the linearity of any conventional wall, though. Instead, like a dirty wound, it was set up in zig zag, and the gallery-goer entered the jagged cuts. In correspondence with Siqueiros’ politic of compelling the viewer to join his revolution, Smith’s viewer has no choice but to become a part of his scream.
Ray Smith Installation Scream (2017) detail at La Tallera. Photo by Karen Moe.
Smith told me how each image in Scream comes from “the stupid little feeds on your cell phone when someone says something so ridiculous, so incongruous that it alters language itself.” The daily inundation with virtually inconceivable absurdity is writing a normalization of madness that is grounded in perversion. By placing himself at the same hierarchical level as the US president, the artist’s over-the-top images compose a Trumpian stare down. They are full of engorged balls, one tagline being “an organ of a boy,” the other responding with “an organ of cruelty,” narrating the danger when a child is given the helm of an international (not to mention the most heavily armed) super-power. These two almighty ball sacks form the bases for the Republican elephant mascot, one glaring dictatorship and wielding tusks, the other a baby elephant tossing out egomaniacal utterances as though they are Cracker-Jacks. There is a dollar sign swastika; a cunt punch forms the plumage for the Stars and Stripes pants exiting stage right (and trying to get away with it); a curvaceous female torso with no head is in-cased in goo; a flailing fuck monster (or is it a fuck toy, putting up a good fight?) has a hoof and a beak for feet and popping up from behind are cartoon eyes that ask in Looney Toon “What’s up? Doc?” The interchangeable pointy hat of the Klan and/or American pilgrim keeps making an appearance (although its point is a tad flaccid). As pledged, the images are as crass as Smith could make them and reiterate the pornographic reality of Trumpian USA. Base. No human heads. No humanity. Brains loped off—decapitated and dumb.
Ray Smith Scream (2017) detail. Photo by Karen Moe.
Ray Smith Scream (2017) detail. Photo by Karen Moe.
Despite the euphoria that followed the election of Joe Biden in November 2020, the artist is still screaming—but the rage has softened somewhat with the very-far-off-in-the-distance possibility of change. I asked Smith, in contrast to his scream, curse, bitch and moan until the last drop of blood after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, what he thinks about the recent Democrat win and Republican defeat. Here’s some of our back and forth:
RS: The fact that 71 million people voted for this murderous, criminal imbecile is a very dark perspective, but his having lost nonetheless postpones the total collapse. What happens now to attempt to mend the divide I’ve no idea. Trump simply represents the worst of the American character and more than half of the electorate can’t understand that, even many that voted against him.
KM: Do you feel hopeful? At all?
RS: The indoctrination of ‘America’ … is a propaganda construct dating back to the European conquest of the continent. And it’s simple white supremacy. Plain and simple. The cat is out of the bag.
KM: So, Trump exposed the systemically racist, imperial neoliberal?
RS: Brought it to a boil. The US has not been at the edge of civil collapse more in the past nine months since the civil war. It has brought out the absolute worse of the American identity and transformed the flag into a symbol of white supremacy as well as the chant ‘USA.’ Equating patriotism to misogyny and racism is seriously problematic and I’m not sure an election can change that. I feel the country will continue to cycle in and out of this horror for years.
Ray Smith Scream (2017) detail. Photo by Karen Moe.
And so, onwards: to the beginning. Parpadeo, like the blinking of an eye, launched Smith’s mirrored narrative of narcissism. As his first series composed entirely of mirrors, Parpadeo was unveiled at Galería Estéreo during Mexico City’s Zona Maco in February 2016. As a simultaneously sad and entertaining comment on the flattened psyche of our contemporaneity, just like with Pepto-Pop three years later, the mirror-art literally out-shone everything else in the booth. Parpadeo faced directly out into the meandering crowd and, through the power of the reflected world, drew them in, as though hypnotized—powerless little magpies of the self. As in the artist’s worlds of mirrors that were soon to come, many of the on-lookers did not appear to be looking at the art they were looking at, at all. Rather, the objects of critical and pleasurable study were themselves.
Ray Smith Parpadeo (2016) at La Tallera. Photo by Karen Moe.
The first thing most people did was check and re-arrange their hair, some brazenly attended to their side view, sucked in their stomachs and smoothed a tunic, some cast covert glances at themselves from a safe distance in order to conceal that fact that they were looking at themselves at all, and teenage girls kneeled in clumps and took giggling group selfies. Some of the viewers resided within the frame a little longer, pausing to send a WhatsApp, exchanged some sharp words with their spouse; some were momentarily caught just walking indifferently by everything, the art not being anything to do with coming to the fair. However, some did look beyond their reflections, experiencing the piece, the ones who came to immerse themselves in the work. With every reflection of human instances cast, as soon as entering the frame, the viewers of Ray Smith’s wall of mirrors became a part of the art.
Ray Smith Parpadeo (2016) detail at La Tallera. Photo by Karen Moe.
In correspondence to the whimsical writhes of Republican ball-sacks and flailing fuck monsters that the viewer palimpsested in Scream, Smith lifted the pictures and phrases drawn on the surfaces of Parpadeo from Mexican newspapers. As excerpts from popular culture that daily punctuate our psyche, these sociological shards not only form the eco-skeleton through which we look into our own reflections, they are also the arbitrators that simultaneously divide and join the reflected and the ‘real.’ As in the impending all-out Scream, some of the words are written backwards, in mirror language, some are written forwards and some combine both directions creating a frenetic transitional space. Indeed, Parpadeo is a graphic novel that tells a story of what we look through in our daily lives and, with the off and on of a blinking consciousness and the rapid fire of the contemporary media, the ephemeral combinations of the human and the artist’s inscriptions form momentary micro-realities.
Ray Smith Parpadeo (2016) detail at La Tallera. Photo by Karen Moe.
Ray Smith Parpadeo (2016) detail Galería Estéreo, Zona Maco. Photo by Karen Moe.
The drawings and utterances on each mirror are packed with mischief. “Hoy! Grandes Descuentos” (Today! Big Discounts!) is announced by a malevolent skull sporting two bargain bin teeth, exposing the demon behind mass consumption (blink); unlike the crude veracity of the skull, another panel contains a trustworthy looking business man who spouts total liquidation but then, his promise of total is undermined as really only 50%, (blink); a multi-armed punching woman is an octopus of resistance, (blink); couples are instructed to “Disculpas. Acepta esposo” (I’m sorry. Accept your husband) by a reptilian imp from a lascivious cabaret replete with a top hat and cane as an unblinking eye stands guard, (blink, blink); soon after, another frame contains a man and woman as “Efercito mordelones,” or army biters, further complicating the ideal of a harmonious love relationship, (blinkety blink); a chimerical woman/leopard with a halo, studious glasses and an Elizabethan neck ruff extends a kindly shake-a-paw, (blink and wink); a frantic-faced obese boy shoves in as much food as he can before someone notices, but, despite his efforts to conceal his addicted behaviour, is an advertisement for not eating to excess, (weep and blink); Guadalupe has become modernized as a spokesperson for The War in Drugs, (adoring eye-lid fluttering blink); solidarity is demanded by an objectified female leg, (contradiction and truth, blink); a salacious dog-creature is freeze-framed in his pasional movil (Rock ON! blink); and, in a swirl of smoke containing a serpent with a white throat of a cat, we read “Parpedeo” followed by the rapid eye movement of quintessential Chilango [8] car-culture of “verde, acelera, choquera,” green, accelerate, crash, (blink. blink. blink). Indeed, in a contemporaneity where our senses are bombarded daily with this, that, another and another, the random pickings and cryptic combinations are precisely the point. Like our transitory reflections momentarily interacting with the fixed image and text, it is up to us to open our eyes and fill in the gaps.
Ray Smith Parpadeo (2016) detail Galería Estéreo, Zona Maco. Photo by Karen Moe.
Ray Smith El Narciso de Jesús (2017) detail at LaTallera. Photo by Karen Moe.
“I’ve always thought of art as a portal. Mirrors can do the same,” Smith told me.
“But a portal to what?” one may ask, trapped in their reflection in a Smithian surface.
“Why a portal beyond yourself, my pretty,” the art responds, “a threshold towards ourselves and the possibility of confronting our twenty-first century narcissism that has mutated into the absolutely monstrous state of hyper-individualism that is necessary to feed the unbridled greed of the neoliberal era and its fully entrenched lack of empathy.”
“Oh.”
Smith’s mirrors show us how, if we stand back and watch our anti-community, we can see our enculturated inability to know self as connected to all others; this is the ultimate horror—and paradoxical hope—enacted by Smith’s mirrors. When one stands back and watches ourselves en masse, we can see how ridiculous we look, witness the self-narration of our foibles, and laugh an uproarious, rupturing laugh or, better yet, scream and run away. And never return. Permanently.
Ray Smith Scream (2017) detail at La Tallera. Photo by Karen Moe.
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Notes:
[1] Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from Ray Smith in this essay are taken from email and WhatsApp messages between Karen Moe and Ray Smith between August 6, 2020 and November 22, 2020.
[4] https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2020/Matsoncommongood.html
[5] Sayak Valencia Gore Capitalism John Plueker, trans. (Originally published as Capitalismo gore, Barcelona: Melusina, 2010). South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2018, 43.
[6] In Gore Capitalism, Valencia demonstrates how the underside (and foundation) of all global corporations—the First World included as it is inextricably connected to its Third— is organized crime.
[7] Sections of this discussion of El Narciso de Jesús were first published in June 2018 as “Rupture, Resistance and Revolution, Mexican Style: Ray Smith, G.T. Pellizzi and David Alfaro Siqueiros.” Border Crossings Magazine Issue 146.
[8]Chilango: the nickname, that is derogatory outside of Mexico City, to refer to the people of Mexico City.
Ray Smith at his installation El Narciso de Jesús (2017) at La Tallera. Photo by Karen Moe.
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About the Artists:
A self-proclaimed "border rat," Ray Smith Yturria was born in Brownsville, TX in 1959 and spent most of his childhood in Mexico City. He emerged in the 1980s and his paintings and sculptures are characterized by an inimitable style and subject matter that reflect his bicultural American and Mexican heritage. Ray Smith has recently exhibited in galleries and museums like GE Galería (Monterrey and Mexico Vity) Museo La Tallera, (Cuernacava México) Quimera, Galeria NM Contemporáneo (Cuernavaca), Mexico Ray Smith Studio, FLNina Johnson (Miami), Lyle O. Reitzel (New York City), Stux Gallery (New York City), McClain Gallery (Houston, and Ruiz-Healy Art (Sant Antonio). His work is held in collections like the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Monterrey, Mexico Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte de Arte Contemporáneo, Badajoz, Spain and more. Smith lives and works in New York City and Cuernavaca.
Karen Moe is a writer, visual and performance artist and a feminist activist. She has been published in such magazines as Border Crossings, ArtSpace, WhiteHot and Revista 192. She is the editor and founder of the magazine Vigilance: Fierce Feminisms. Karen has exhibited and performed across Canada, in the US and in Mexico. Her first book, Victim: a Manifesto, is being published in Fall 2021. Karen lives in British Columbia, Canada and in Mexico City.
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