Kaneem Smith
Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery
- Miranda Lash -
Kaneem Smith, Luminous Bereavement, 2007; burlap, wax, oil; 36 x 20 x10 inches
(foreground) Plantation Storyline, 2007; burlap, wax, oil; dimensions variable; (background) Bearing Momentary Exotic Appeal and Relevance, 2007; burlap, wax, oil; images courtesy the artist and Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston
Kaneem Smith’s work is both ambitious in scope and deceptively simple in presentation, making humble materials such as burlap and cotton bear the weight of history. Working in shapes that teeter between the utilitarian and the abstract, Smith communicates the layering of time without adhering to a rigidly specific narrative. A recent exhibition of her work at Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery is quite possibly the most effective example to date of the artist achieving this complicated task.
In the gallery, one encounters a trio of works, each slightly different in format yet unified by an aesthetic of accretion. On the north wall hangs Luminous Bereavement, a pair of pants sewn from burlap and thickly coated in wax and oil. Contorted into an uncanny position, like a dancer with dislocated limbs, the pants appear ready to swallow the viewer into the gaping, mouthlike waistline. The visible stitching and unapologetically coarse texture of the work communicate signs of labor, age and wear, although these pants were never actually worn.
Opposite this, demurely arranged on the floor in a manner that recalls a track of human footprints, are the multiple sculptures that comprise Plantation Storyline. Small brown bags—again burlap coated in wax—are stuffed, their openings folded back, allowing soft tufts of cotton to peek through the edges. While multiplicity might evoke notions of mass production, each element’s idiosyncratically folded edges also conjure thoughts of the single human worker.
Taking center stage in both height and scale is Bearing Momentary Exotic Appeal and Relevance, a sculpture that is the crescendo of this installation. Suspended from the ceiling, oversized pants woven from burlap sacks also display their former use as carriers of coffee beans. The words “Product of Kenya,” an outline of the African continent and a list of locations (most likely export destinations) are printed on the fabric. With pajamalike “sleeper feet” sewn to its legs, this garment seems to beg the metaphorical question, who wears the pants in this house? Or, in other words, who is in change of the product and industry that the objects that comprise this work were once a part of?
Recalling another sort of “industry,” I remember touring a Navy submarine with a cousin in Annapolis, Maryland, as a teenager. Walking through cabins, we entered a room that stored long-range nuclear missiles in neat shelves below a few bunks. I remember touching the cold steel. It was a unique experience—a moment in my life where an object, by its mere existence and materiality, flooded my thoughts with associations: death, destruction and competition—an unspoken narrative of the men who both maintained these missiles and slept above them. Teasing out such implications—the accomplishments and the sins embedded in the detritus of human civilization—is analogous to Smith’s art. Though she coats her sculptures in subtle layers of semiotic accretion, her work does function as a poignant form of associative archaeology.
Miranda Lash is a Curatorial Assistant at The Menil Collection in Houston.