Ring The Alarm

Guild Hall’s online program “Ring the Alarm” continues on Friday, March 5, at 6 p.m. with a conversation between Renee Cox and Shinique Smith. This free program will be held on Zoom. The series, which began in 2020, is inspired by a forthcoming Guild Hall exhibition of Black artists that Renee Cox, a new member of Guild Hall’s Academy of the Arts, will be co-curating for the summer of 2023. Previous conversations with Cox included Derrick Adams and Sanford Biggers, focused on empowerment, the Black experience, and issues of contemporary life.

“I am very touched and honored to be part of the Guild Hall Academy. I look forward to a great year of conversations on ‘Ring the Alarm,’ exposing the museum to a wider and more diverse audience,” said Cox.

The March 5 guest, Shinique Smith, is a Los Angeles-based painter and sculptor known for her monumental abstractions of calligraphy, textiles, and collages. Smith’s personal histories and belongings intertwine with thoughts of the vast nature of “things” that we consume and discard and how objects resonate on an intimate and social scale.

Over the last 20 years, Smith has gleaned visual poetry from vintage clothing and explored concepts of ritual through tying writing and gestures inspired by her travels and her early graffiti roots in Baltimore. Through her process, Smith builds a complex material vocabulary that deftly interweaves brushstrokes, private narratives, and symbolism for the viewer to divine and intuit. Smith’s practice operates at the convergence of consumption, displacement and spiritual sanctuary, revealing connections across space, time, and place to suggest the possibility of constructing worlds renewed by hopeful delight.

“Guild Hall is very excited to present this first installment of ‘Ring the Alarm’ for 2021. We believe now more than ever that the need for open dialogue on art, race and politics is timely and something that we as a community at large need to engage in more,” noted Guild Hall’s museum director and chief curator Christina Strassfield. “The response to the first two talks with Derrick Adams and Sanford Biggers was truly inspiring and we plan to continue this series of conversations leading up to the 2023 summer exhibition that Renee Cox will guest curate.”

This program is free and participants can register at guildhall.org.