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Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art acknowledges it resides on the ancestral territory of the Osage, Kaw, and Otoe-Missouria, among other tribal nations forcibly moved to the region such as the Shawnee, Wyandot, Delaware, Potawatomi, Sac and Fox and Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo) nations. We recognize and support the continued vibrancy of Native communities and cultures today who continue to thrive, as well as the inherent sovereignty of tribal nations. We are compelled to serve and advocate for these communities in accordance with our public mission.

Kemper Museum acknowledges and respects the diversity of Native people connected to this land today. Many recognize the land and all beings who live within it as relatives. We acknowledge the earth we inhabit, the waters of the Blue River, the Kansas River, the Missouri River, and the plants, animals, and people supported by them. 

We acknowledge our responsibility to be good caretakers of the land we occupy. 

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Paul Anthony Smith

Artist Paul Anthony Smith (Jamaican, born 1988) earned a B.F.A. in ceramics at Kansas City Art Institute. While a student many of his works were ceramics and painting; his earlier paintings depicting airport tarmac workers were featured in the Kemper Museum exhibition The Center is a Moving Target in 2014. For the past decade, Smith has used a process of picotage—picking away at the image and individual and at the same time adding to it—exploring the layers and meditations on the complexities and multifaceted spaces of social and cultural identity in the Caribbean.

Untitled (2022), part of a series of works photographed in Jamaica, where the artist was born, and New York City, where he lives and works, demonstrates Smith’s longstanding exploration of the concept of hybrid identity. He employs familiar geometric patterns from architecture in the Caribbean as a barrier obscuring views of groups of people. The overlaid pattern alludes to barriers that socially, culturally, and physically obscure the image, creating tension, and calling into question notions of the image and its representations as “truth.”

Artist Talk | Paul Anthony Smith

In this artist talk, Paul Anthony Smith discusses the creation of paintings and unique picotage on pigment prints which explore the artist’s autobiography, as well as issues of identity within the African diaspora. Referencing both W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness and Franz Fanon’s theory of cultural confusions caused by colonialism, Smith alludes to diasporic rituals of adorning the body. Recorded May 19, 2022 at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City.

Paul Anthony SmithJamaican, born 1988