Baxter St is pleased to announce The Chance Whale, the first solo show of 2022 Baxter St Resident and interdisciplinary artist, Gwen Smith. The Chance Whale explores Smith’s spiritual navigation from the womb to the ocean through linkages between a pre-emancipatory history of Blackness and the sea, ideas concealed in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Smith’s quest as a surfer.

Smith began surfing in Rockaway in September 2021, coincidentally in the midst of the annual whale migration, leading her to chance sightings of whales. These are the same waters Melville writes about in the first chapter of Moby Dick. “I have hit my shins on the old pylons of piers Melville describes from back then,” she says. In December 2021, Smith suffered a herniated disc, forcing her to take a break from surfing. During her recovery, she listened to Moby Dick repeatedly, as she prayed to return to the ocean.

“Surfing at Rockaway Beach led me to consider the beaches of Blackness, to reflect on the connection and importance between the Black community and the ocean.” She takes inspiration from Robin Coste Lewis’s poem Voyage of the Sable Venus, referring to an engraving created in the late 1790s, found in a journal of assets justifying the middle passage and the enslavement of Black Women from Africa to the white masses. In it, the Black Venus is pictured surfing the same shell as Botticelli’s blonde.

In Smith’s work, she seeks to reclaim space rather than rewrite the stories of the past. The Chance Whale is a continuation of Smith’s personal origin story, framing collaged, kaleidoscopic portals through which we view life and the cyclical passage of time. Images of wounds, waves, and whales reminiscent of female sexual organs, are collaged with cut-out photographs of her own face and body and surfboard. These surreal, highly saturated, and patterned compositions are a means of exploring and connecting Smith’s Black American lineage, the African Diaspora, and the often-complex relationships of Black people to nature, particularly to the ocean. The Chance Whale, like Moby Dick and surfing, is an allusion to being just on the verge of emancipation and attaining freedom.

About Gwen Smith

Gwen Smith (b. 1968) received her BA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1990, moved to New York City in 1991, and studied at the International Center of Photography. In the ‘90s, she first worked as a Photography Assistant and as a Photography Research Editor for publications including Vogue and The New Yorker, until she became a mother in 2004. Smith’s photographic practice has been ongoing, though her primary focus for the past 18 years was on raising her son River Steinbach. Founder of The Black Woman Project (Vol. 1 & 2) published in 2020, Smith has pursued a multidisciplinary approach to her art-making. Smith was a 2021-2022 Artist in Residence at the Center for Book Arts, in NYC. In November of 2021, she debuted her photo collage paintings ORIGIN at Justine Kurland’s Studio. The Chance Whale is Smith’s first solo exhibition in NYC.

About Baxer St

Founded in 1884, Baxter St is one of New York’s oldest artist-run nonprofit spaces committed to lens-based arts. Today, the organization is a socially engaged art incubator that prepares lens-based artists for their debut and helps them create sustainable practices to move forward with integrity. In addition to a year-round exhibition schedule, the organization hosts artist residencies, critique groups, and a public series of artist talks. A diverse range of partnerships with mission-aligned nonprofits, expand audiences, opportunities, and networks for artists. In 2020, Baxter St co-founded the DEIA Task Force, a collective of 15+ small and mid-sized, NYC-based arts nonprofits working to diversify their organizations as they increase equity across the cultural sector.

Location: 126 Baxter Street, New York, NY 10013, United States

Time: 6:00 PM — 8:00 PM EST

Free!

Registration