2022/2023 Capital Artist Resident: Nyugen E. Smith

Residency Reflection from Nyugen:

“My time as the Capital Artist in Residence was spent in deep discovery, experimentation, and community building in collaboration with CulturalDC. What made this possible is the organization's commitment to truly supporting the artist by way of a generous stipend, providing comfortable housing at no cost to the artist, a sizeable studio, and a collaborative approach to coordinating intimate social events with members of the CulturalDC community which includes collectors, curators, prominent local artists, and board members. Together, these offerings made it possible for me to truly make the most of the time spent in residence, developing a whole new body of work that I presented in the Mobile Art Gallery and a performance in the Source Theater created in collaboration with a local musician.”

Residency Focus

During my time as artist in residence, I will create new works on paper and sculpture as part of my on-going Bundle House series. Bundlehouse/Bundle House/BUNDLEHOUSE/BUNDLE HOUSE, a name/term I coined in 2005, is about rebuilding one’s home, one’s life and community after life as they knew it, had been dramatically altered. I think about climate change, natural and man-made disasters, famine, war, pandemics, and genocide as examples of events that would affect a place so deeply, as to cause displacement and forced migration; dramatically changing lives in what sometimes feel like an instant.”

—Nyugen E. Smith

Performances and Exhibition

Nyugen E. Smith’s residency culminated with performances at the Source Theatre and an exhibition in the Mobile Art Gallery, Bundlehouse: Ancient Future Memory. The performance was adapted from a portion of Smith’s original short story, While You Sleep. Inspired by a statement from Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite, While You Sleep is about ritualistic practices necessary to prevent millions of enslaved Africans, having perished in the transatlantic journey, from returning to haunt the living. The exhibition in the Mobile Art Gallery was a continuation of Smith’s Bundle House series, a name he coined in 2005. Bundle House is about rebuilding one’s home, one’s life and community after life as they knew it, had been dramatically altered.

Residency Period

From October 2022 to January 2023, Nyugen E. Smith stayed in Washington, DC, housing provided by Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners. His residency culminated with performances at the Source Theatre and an exhibition in the Mobile Art Gallery in January 12 - March 12, 2023.

About

Smith is a Caribbean-American interdisciplinary artist based in Jersey City, NJ. Through performance, found object sculpture, mixed media drawing, painting, video, photo, and writing, Smith deepens his knowledge of the 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 in his practice.  

Smith holds a BA, Fine Art from Seton Hall University and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been presented at the Museum of Latin American Art, Peréz Art Museum, Museum of Cultural History, Norway, Nordic Black Theater, Norway, Newark Museum, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, among others. Nyugen is the recipient of the Creative Capital award, Leonore Annenberg Performing and Visual Arts Fund, Franklin Furnace Fund, Dr. Doris Derby Award,  New Jersey State Council on the Arts grant, and Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.