Patricia Smith was born in Camden, New Jersey, US and studied art at Rutgers University, Camden and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. She received her MFA from Rutgers University Mason Gross School of Art in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1984, and subsequently moved to New York City. She immediately became active in the downtown Manhattan and East Village art scenes, exhibiting at such historic galleries as Sensory Evolution, Helio, Life Gallery, Cuando, Nico Smith, Limbo, Zeus Trabia and Nite Gallery. Her first solo exhibition in New York was at Piezo Electric Gallery in 1986.
Smith was a founding member of Femme Vitale, a group of downtown women artists which, beginning in the mid-1980s and throughout its ten-year existence, staged many exhibitions in offbeat locations throughout New York City, including the Brecht Forum in Tribeca and the Times Square Hotel in Manhattan. During the 1990s, her work was included in numerous exhibitions at galleries in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, including the pioneering Test Site, Sauce Gallery, Sideshow, Eyewash and Pierogi 2000. Also during the 1990s, she staged several group exhibitions at her loft in Manhattan’s financial district and introduced the work of artists from Europe and under-known local artists to New York audiences. She has also curated large installation projects in conjunction with Voorkamer Artists Initiative in Lier, Belgium and at the University of Maryland, College Park.
She is currently represented by the Front Room Gallery in New York, where she has had five solo exhibitions since 2006. Other solo exhibitions include Black + Herron Gallery, Saint Peter’s Church, A.I.R. Gallery and Piezo Electric Gallery in New York; Croxhapox Gallery in Ghent, Belgium; and S.O.M.A. in Berlin, Germany.
Her work has been included in group exhibitions at museums and institutions worldwide, including the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York; Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, California; BRIC in Brooklyn, New York; l’ESAD in Grenoble, France; Centre d'Art Contemporain de Fontaine in France; Broadcast Gallery in Dublin, Ireland; Austellungsraum Klingental in Basel, Switzerland; Housatonic Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut; Stedelijk Museum in Aalst, Belgium; Grand Bazaar in Istanbul in conjunction with the 2007 Istanbul Biennial; Stedelijk Museum in Lier, Belgium; Weatherspoon Museum at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro and Art Amsterdam KunstRAI. Other galleries that have exhibited her work include Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Jancar Gallery and Solway Jones Gallery in Los Angeles, Dorsch Gallery in Miami, Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn, Dean Project and Artifact Gallery in New York and numerous others. Her work was recently featured on the cover of You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography, published by the University of Arizona.
Smith’s exhibitions have been reviewed in various publications, including The New York Times, Art in America, Los Angeles Times, L Magazine, Le Devoir (Montreal), The Globe and Mail (Toronto), De Morgen (Belgium), Critical Review, New York Magazine, and others. She was awarded artist’s residencies for 2013 and 2015 at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and in 2014 was an artist in residence at Kaus Australis in Rotterdam. She was a 2014 New York Foundation of the Arts fellowship winner in Drawing/Printmaking/Artist’s Books. She currently lives and works in Paris.
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