Cauleen Smith
Chicago, IL
Cauleen Smith is an interdisciplinary artist whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination. Operating in multiple materials and arenas, Smith roots her work firmly within the discourse of mid-twentieth-century experimental film. Drawing from structuralism, third world cinema, and science fiction, she makes things that deploy the tactics of these disciplines while offering a phenomenological experience for spectators and participants. Her films, objects, and installations have been featured in group exhibitions. She has had solo shows for her films and installations at The Kitchen, MCA Chicago, Threewalls, Chicago. She shows her drawings and 2D work with Corbett vs. Dempsey. Smith is the recipient of several grants and awards including the Rockefeller Media Arts Award, Chicago 3Arts Grant, and Rauschenberg Residency. Smith was born in Riverside, California and grew up in Sacramento. She earned a BA in Creative Arts from San Francisco Sate University and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theater Film and Television.
Remote Viewing and Other Ways of Seeing
Cauleen Smith is an interdisciplinary artist whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination.
Artist BioIn the narratives for Remote Viewing and Other Ways of Seeing, characters extracted from the actual events described below lose their memories, move through space and time, and ultimately recover their sense of self. Some characters are redeemed. Some are irredeemable. But all are recovered and rewarded for their journey. The films focus on burial and an excavation separated by space and time but connected by the shared intention of violent erasure. The happenings explored in the films were not rooted in a desire to resolve absence and loss; rather, they were meant to conceal. The films seek not only to expose that which has disappeared, but also to investigate the gestures and associated traumas of burial itself. In so doing, the images link these sites and incidents with something recuperative, something recognizable as art—Land Art.