The map of the United States is one of the most central and recognizable motifs in Smith’s paintings, drawings, and prints. Her works reveal the falsehoods and assumptions underlying this supposedly objective image, thereby challenging its authority and symbolic power. In Smith’s maps of North America, the land transgresses and ignores current borders, demonstrates changing populations and notions of citizenship, and foregrounds how Indigenous peoples have shaped this continent since long before European invasion. Smith’s works reflect her philosophy of maps: they are pictures of experiences rather than markers of geopolitical boundaries, embodying an understanding of place that privileges relationships, stories, and memory. Her maps are a form of reclamation, forcefully asserting Indigenous sovereignty on stolen land.
