Nyugen Smith, Bundlehouse: Rising Into Something Else Again (2021)
Bundlehouse: Rising Into Something Else Again, 2021. Mixed media and collage and found objects on paper. 75 x 95 x 2 inches.
Nyugen Smith
USA, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, 1976
Bundlehouse: Rising Into Something Else Again, 2021
Nyugen Smith (USA, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago). Born 1976 in Jersey City, Smith is a first-generation Caribbean-American interdisciplinary artist. Through performance, found object sculpture, mixed media drawing, painting, video, photo and writing, Nyugen deepens his knowledge of historical and present-day conditions of Black African descendants in the diaspora. Trauma, spiritual practices, language, violence, memory, architecture, landscape and climate change are primary concerns. His works responds to the legacy of European colonial rule in the African diaspora and considers imperialist practices of oppression, violence, and intergenerational trauma.
Smith's work has been featured in exhibitions at key galleries and museums which include the El Museo del Barrio and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. He received a B.A in Fine Art from Seton Hall University in 2001 and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His exhibitions include:
Dandy Lion: (Re)Articulating Black Masculine Identity, 2015, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago ,South Loop, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, 2017, MOLAA, Museum of Latin American Art ,Long Beach, California, USA
Bordering the Imaginary: Art from the Dominican Republic, 2018, Haiti, and their Diasporas, BRIC Arts Media House ,Brooklyn, New York, USA
The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Contemporary Caribbean Art, 2019, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Downtown Miami, Miami, Florida, USA
Estamos Bien: La Trienal 20/21, 2021 ,El Museo del Barrio, Harlem, New York, USA
He is the recipient of the Leonore Annenberg Performing and Visual Arts Fund Award, the Franklin Furnace Fund Award, the Dr. Doris Derby Award, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.