Looking back at the year we just left behind, we still wanted an opportunity to do a little recap of Feast and Famine, Emily Mae Smith's solo exhibition which was on view at SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah through Jan 1, 2021. It was part of a stellar seaason of shows at SCAD, one of which also being Derrick Adams show we just wrote about. Curated by Ben Tollefson, associate curator of SCAD exhibitions, the selection of paintings included in the presentation provides an overview of the past five years since the artist's breakthrough solo show in NYC.
Emily Mae Smith named her third institutional solo show after one of the central pieces in the exhibition, Feast and Famine (Her previous musuem exhibitions were an international debut at the Consortium in Dijon, France in 2018, and a US museum debut at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in 2019). The painting, originally from 2017, is dominated by the mirrored text spelling "Feast Famine" above two cheetahs which are seemingly "guarding" a desert landscape that reveals the parts of a nude female body, overall evoking the art nouveau aesthetics. This particular piece encapsulates one of Smith's most recurring points, speaking of how the widely popular representation of women's nude figures through history was conceptualized and created from a men's viewpoint. Feeding the desire for such imagery (feast), such works completely ignored or removed the actual traits of a person depicted (famine), inspiring the artist to represent this with a sharp, harmonious image. By reducing such a traditionally popular and ever-present trope to a barren landscape, she further transforms the historically neglected subjects into the metaphorical foundation on which the growth of the present-day world has been possible.
A few other works in the show include her iconic broom character in a different capacity, depicting its closeup "face" or referencing historic imagery with its "full-body" portrayal such as in the newest and never before presented painting, Cassiopeia. This character, which has over time become somewhat of Smith's signature or even alter-ego, has been developed from "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" featured in Disney's Fantasia and has its origins in a namesake poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. And while its popular Disney embodiment feels playful and innocent the artist is more interested in the ideas it evokes, the ones of domesticity and what's been considered "women's work." First used in her work back in 2013, the broom as a character provided much-needed fluidity and inclusiveness to speak of serious issues that are of her utmost concern while being able to flirt with humor.
"(The comedians) tell you really painful truths about the world as a joke," the artist stated in the interview we've featured back in our Spring 2019 issue. "They make you laugh or reveal it in a way that brings you into their world rather than making you afraid, so you come at these issues with humor." This type of recurring graphic imagery, which also includes gaping mouth as a way to emphasize her own voice within the art world and turn her visuals into literal screams of urgency, or the presence of literal sharp tongues, have become Smith's vehicles to speak of painful subjects without jeopardizing her position or the value or the importance of her view and opinion. —Sasha Bogojev
