Emma Smith is a visual artist based in the UK and works internationally. She has a social practice and creates platforms for people to share research, experiences, knowledge and ‘no-how’ of human relationships with one another and the places we co-habit.
Through installations, objects, performances and actions, Smith’s work reveals the subtleties of human connectivity: relationship, communication, sense of place and entanglement. Her work looks in particular at hidden forms of connection: the tacit / the intimate / the transient / the subconscious / the remote / and the invisible. She is currently developing new work looking at extended cognition and consciousness, touch beyond the ends of the body and the body as earth.
Smith’s process is research and production based and often involves the bringing together of multi-disciplinary teams including collaborations with academics, professionals and hobbyists and drawing on the fields of anthropology, history, psychology, neurology, physics, ecology and biology. Through this co-research process her work results in published findings as well as new artwork, unearthing forgotten histories and proposing new futures.
Involving thousands of people in each project, Smith creates ephemeral experiences particular to those who are there, scores, props and games for non-durational performance, and permanent sculptural landscapes, to be activated at any time. She creates work for the public realm and gallery ranging from intimate exchanges to large scale performances, site-specific events, installations, performance objects and permanent works. Through her work Smith utilises the gallery as a space for active research and the public space as an environment for co-habitation, experimentation, play and collective action.
Previous exhibitions and performances include Tate Modern, Barbican, Whitechapel, Bluecoat, Whitworth, ICA and Arnolfini with international projects across the globe.