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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Reading List

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Building upon the scholarly study that underlies her practice, Smith has selected six books for visitors to read within the exhibition. Three of their covers are depicted in her Firespitters series, while the other three are from her series BLK FMNNST Loaner Library, 1989–2019.

For BLK FMNNST Loaner Library, 1989–2019, Smith created thirty-eight drawings of books whose subjects include science fiction, Black resistance, cinematography, and Indigenous teachings. Although the drawings from this series are not currently on view, the Whitney’s Frances Mulhall Achilles Library and Special Collections has assembled the full collection of books, which can be accessed in the Museum’s library. Please email library@whitney.org to make an appointment.

Books featured in BLK FMNNST Loaner Library, 1989–2019: 

Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, Thought Forms

Dionne Brand, At the Full and Change of the Moon

Dionne Brand, Land to Light On

Dionne Brand, Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging

Gwendolyn Brooks, Riot

Tisa Bryant, Unexplained Presence

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

Kathleen Collins, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?

Combahee River Collective, The Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties

Samuel Delany, The Mad Man

Fred H. Detmers, American Cinematographer Manual, Sixth Edition

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Wendy Makoons Geniusz, Our Knowledge Is Not Primitive: Decolonizing Botanical Anishinaabe Teachings

Marcel Griaule, Conversations with Ogotemmeli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas

Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route

Rob Herwig, 128 Houseplants You Can Grow

Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" 

Jaime Jiménez, Juguetes: A Photo-documentary of Traditional Toys and Games from the Dominican Republic

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Jethro Kloss, Back to Eden: The Classic Guide to Herbal Medicine, Natural Foods, and Home Remedies since 1939

Norio Kobayashi, Bonsai: Miniature Potted Trees. Tourist Library #13

Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers

Camara Laye, The Radiance of the King

Katherine McKittrick, Syliva Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis

Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog: His World as Composed by Mingus

Trinh T. Minh-ha, When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender, and Cultural Politics

Toni Morrison, The Origin of Others

Toni Morrison, Sula

Julius Nyerere, Ujamaa: Essays on Socialism

Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces

John Peterson, High-Flying Kites

Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition

Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being

Hortense Spillers, Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture

Robert Stone, Day Hikes around Los Angeles

Jean Toomer, Cane

Sanzo Wada, A Dictionary of Color Combinations

Grace B. Ward and Onas M. Ward, Colorful Desert Wildflowers: California and Arizona

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

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.