Cauleen Smith: Mutualities

Feb 17, 2020–Jan 31, 2021

Brightly-dressed women standing around and looking upward.
Brightly-dressed women standing around and looking upward.

Cauleen Smith, still from Sojourner, 2018. Video, color, sound, 22:41 min. Courtesy the artist, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, and Kate Werble Gallery, New York

Cauleen Smith (b. 1967) draws on experimental film, non-Western cosmologies, poetry, and science fiction to create works that reflect on memory and Afro-diasporic histories. Mutualities, the artist’s first solo show in New York, presents two of Smith’s films, Sojourner and Pilgrim—each in a newly created installation environment—along with a new group of drawings collectively titled Firespitters. 

The films unfold across several important sites in Black spiritual and cultural history, weaving together writings by women from different eras, including Shaker visionary Rebecca Cox Jackson, abolitionist Sojourner Truth, the 1970s Black feminist organization Combahee River Collective, and experimental jazz composer and spiritual leader Alice Coltrane, whose music also forms the soundtrack for both films. Smith’s poetic use of the camera and light draws the viewer into a welcoming and accepting space that reveals the many ways in which invention and generosity can be resources for transformation and regeneration.

Cauleen Smith: Mutualities is organized by Chrissie Iles, Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Curator, with Clemence White, senior curatorial assistant.

Cauleen Smith: Mutualities is part of the Whitney’s emerging artists program, sponsored by

Generous support is provided by The Rosenkranz Foundation.

Additional support is provided by the Artists Council.

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Pilgrim

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This film traces the artist’s pilgrimage to three sites: Alice Coltrane’s Turiyasangitananda Vedantic Center in Agoura, California; Watts Towers in Los Angeles; and the Black spiritual activist Rebecca Cox Jackson’s Watervliet Shaker community in upstate New York. In vivid evocations of each place’s creative atmosphere, Smith’s  camera slowly explores the ashram’s interior and Coltrane’s musical instruments, while her use of 16mm film—with its soft grain and subtle color palette—infuses Watts Towers and the Shaker garden’s flowers with an emotional intimacy. 

Jackson’s advocacy of racial and gender equality, her fight against the patriarchy of organized religion, and her awareness of the African roots of her faith resonate with Coltrane’s own hybrid, transnational spiritual and musical language. Both women’s challenges to accepted authority are, like the enduring independent spirit of Watts Towers, grounded in a sense of place, community, and generosity that are also hallmarks of Smith’s own transformative work.

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Pilgrim, 2017

A film still depicting two people walking down a concrete path in a forest.
A film still depicting two people walking down a concrete path in a forest.

Cauleen Smith, still from Pilgrim, 2017. Video, color, sound; 7:41 min. Whitney Museum of American Art; purchase, with funds from the Film and Video Committee

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection

View 3 works

In the News

"[A] visual feat" —The Art Newspaper

"Smith merges utopian futurism with wistful revision." —The New Yorker

"In many ways Cauleen Smith is the dynamic, conceptual artist one would expect. Beyond expectations, however, is her bold—and especially collaborative—creative voice." —CR Fashion Book

On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

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