OUT OF THE METROPOLIS - Art exchange across borders is a three-year project that aims to explore and support insight and innovation in the field of co-creation and circulation of visual art, and in particular contemporary photographic practices, across borders.
Over the years, French visual artist SMITH has crafted a constellation of works — a personal cosmogony that explores his own origins, the evolution of his environment and communities, and the diverse universes he’s traversed and depicted, this collection form Dami. Primarily lens-based and deeply research-driven, SMITH’s photographs and films explore transformations—both his own and the world’s. His work is anchored in a dialogue between the self—humans—and others: non-humans, equally alive and vibrant.
For Noua, SMITH unveils a new chapter of this cosmos, titled Imago. Focused on our experience of the world, SMITH invites us to conceive it through both thought and body. In Imago, gestures, movements, and actions pave the way to another level of reality. It’s about leaving behind violence and injustice to imagine, to dream of new ways of being in the world. We return to it, with one persistent question: how do we live alongside our world?
Through SMITH’s thermal camera, we witness the heat radiating from various matter which would be normally invisible to the naked eye. Warmer areas glow in vivid hues of yellow, orange, and red, while cooler regions are cast in deeper shades of purple, blue, and black.
In collaboration with Norwegian architect Sami Rintala, Imago invites the viewer to take a similar path, to wander through the space and move beyond it, focusing on the infinitely small and the infinitely vast; to direct our attention to all things and beings, and to leave with the conviction that we can do better.
