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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. 

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Paul Anthony Smith

Paul Anthony Smith Exhibition Checklist FINAL.pdf

Searching was a solo exhibition of well-known picotage photographic works and recent painted landscapes by artist Paul Anthony Smith (Jamaican, born 1988). Together, these works engaged concepts of access and vulnerability.

In part, this exhibition celebrated ten years of Smith’s picotage technique, a process whereby he uses sharp tools to stipple the surfaces of photographs in specific patterns and in select areas.

Photographed in Jamaica, where the artist was born, and New York City, where he lives and works, these images demonstrate Smith’s longstanding exploration of the concept of hybrid identity. The picotage process—the picking away at the image and individual and at the same time adding to it—explore the layers and meditations on the complexities and multifaceted spaces of social and cultural identity in the Caribbean.

In works from Smith’s recent Dreams Deferred and Centering the Periphery series, he employs a narrow depth of field where views of tropical beaches and park landscapes are obscured by the blurred geometric pattern of chain link fencing. Like masking the figures, the fence 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.”

When considered together, these series reveal Smith’s ongoing meditations on memories, retracing routes, centering, access, and vulnerability that connect to an overarching notion of searching.

Searching was organized by Kemper Museum of Contemporary and curated by Erin Dziedzic, director of curatorial affairs.

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. This program was recorded May 19, 2022 at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City. Programming is generously supported by the Jack and Karen Holland Visiting Artist Program​.  Smith's solo exhibition "Searching" is organized by Kemper Museum of Contemporary and curated by Erin Dziedzic, director of curatorial affairs.

Should I go to art school?  | The New York Times

Paul Anthony Smith: Tradewinds | The Brooklyn Rail

Paul Anthony Smith Reanimates the Dead In Resonant New Series of Photographs | ARTNEWS

‘We saved each other’: Alvaro Barrington’s 90s hip-hop exhibition | The Guardian