Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey (MARCO), 2020. Farsa y Artificio Installation view.
Melanie Smith and Tanya Barson in discussion at Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), 2018. Farsa y Artificio opening.
Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey (MARCO), 2020. Farsa y Artificio Installation view.
Melanie Smith Studio, Mexico City. 2019.
Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), 2018. Farsa y Artificio Installation view.
Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), 2018. Opening night of solo exhibition Farsa y Artificio.
Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey (MARCO), 2020. Farsa y Artificio Installation view.
MELANIE SMITH (b. 1965, England/Lives in Mexico City and London)
“In general, both in painting and film, I am searching for an unstable, undefined ground that creates potentials. … It is always a question of following various lines of research that for me coincide at my sites of interest and result in these layers of associations and visual encounters.”
Born in Poole, England, Melanie Smith received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Reading, where she studied painting. In 1989, she moved to Mexico City, joining an international community of artists and writers there. Her work was included in the first exhibition of installation art in Mexico, curated by Guillermo Santamarina at the Museum of the Ex-Convento de los Leones. Since then, the city has played an important role in her work; she has produced installations, videos, films, photographs, and paintings in which she considers Mexico City’s density of population and structures, its production of detritus, and its endless entropy and reconstruction. These concerns are balanced by Smith’s interest in the legacies of modernism and post-avant-garde movements as they manifest themselves in Latin America.
In her 2002 video, Spiral City, Smith filmed one of Mexico City’s suburbs from a helicopter as it flew in a widening spiral over the densely gridded urban space. The video takes Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty as a referent and draws from the unique topography and dramatic immensity of Mexico City. In other projects, she has focused upon the legacies of Surrealism in the Americas. Writing about Smith’s work, art historian Dawn Ades describes the artist’s relationship to modernity and the present: “There is nothing sentimental about Smith’s pursuit of the modern spectacle in Mexico… No reference to history and the weight of the past. This is modernity of a shattered, intimate kind, already old, past its sell-by date, but always still to happen.”
2020
Melanie Smith, Farsa y Artificio, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Monterrey, Mexico
Maria Elena, UK Mexican Arts Society, London, England, UK
2019
Digging Up the Present, Saint Leger Centre d´Art Contemporain, Pougues-les-Eaux, France
Melanie Smith. Farsa y Artificio, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico
2018
Melanie Smith. Farsa y Artificio - Museu D’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain
Parte o Pedazo, Museo de Arte de la Fundación José Cuervo, Tequila, Mexico
2017
Obscuridades bucólicas, La Tallera, Cuernavaca, Mexico.
2016
Abandoned Bodies and Uncertain Futures, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA
2015
Fordlandia, LULU, Mexico City, Mexico
2014
Melanie Smith, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Melanie Smith, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), Houston, TX, USA
Green is the Colour, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA
Fordlandia, Milton Keynes Gallery, Buckinghamshire, UK
Melanie Smith, Crocodiles and Elevators, Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, Lithuania
2013
Irreversible/ Illegible /Unstable, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico
Xilitla, FLORA ars+natura, Bogota, Colombia.
2012
Short Circuit, Villa Merkel, Esslingen, Germany
Melanie Smith, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, Brazil
2011
Bulto, Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima, Peru
Red Square Impossible Pink, Mexican Pavilion, 54th International Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
2010
Xilitla: incidentes fuera de eje, Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City, Mexico
2009
Spiral City & Other Vicarious Pleasures, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, USA
2008
Parres Trilogy, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami Beach, FL, USA
2007
Melanie Smith: Spiral City & Other Vicarious Pleasures, The Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Beldar, Lakewood, CO, USA
2006
Spiral City & Other Vicarious Pleasures, Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Artes, MUCA Campus, Mexico City, Mexico
Parres Trilogy, Art Now, Tate Britain, London, UK
2004
Cerca Series: Melanie Smith, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA, USA
2002
Seis Pasos Hacia la Realidad, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City, Mexico
1997
Orange Lush, Instituto Anglo Mexicano de Cultura, Mexico City, Mexico
1996
Installation, Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, IL, USA
Dream spots: Taxqueña bus station, Sala Díaz, San Antonio, TX, USA
1992
L’Escaut, Brussels, Belgium
1989
Salón de Los Aztecas, Mexico City, Mexico
Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, Irvine, CA, USA
Arts Council, London, England
Centro Cultural Muros, Madrid, Spain
Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim, Braumadinho, Brazil
Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, FL, USA
Colección Isabel y Agustín Coppel, Mexico City, Mexico
Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zürich, Switzerland
ESSL Collection, Klosterneuburg, Austria
EVN Collection, Maria Enzersdorf, Austria
Fundación ARCO, Madrid, Spain
Fundación BBVA Bancomer, Mexico City, Mexico
Fundación Colección Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico
Fundación Televisa, Mexico City, Mexico
Fundación Vergel, Cuernavaca, Mexico
Grupo de los Dieciséis, Mexico City, Mexico
Inhotim Brazil, Brumadinho, Brazil
Institut Valencià d'Art Moderne, Valencia, Spain
Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia, Spain
Jerry Speyer Collection, New York, NY, USA
Lucille & Ronald Neeley Foundation, San Diego, CA, USA
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX, USA
Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain
Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru
Museo de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo de Santander y Cantabria, Spain
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico
Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Mexico
Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Mexico
Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte, Mexico City, Mexico
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Tate Modern, London, UK
The Bruce and Diane Halle Collection, Scottsdale, AZ, USA
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY, USA
Vergel Foundation, New York, NY, USA
Villa Merkel, Esslingen, Germany
Zabludowicz Collection, London, England
The 10th edition of Liverpool Biennial, the largest festival of contemporary visual art in the UK, opens to the public on Saturday 14 July 2018 marking its 20th anniversary with exhibitions, performances, film screenings, family events and talks. The Biennial runs for 15 weeks until 28 October 2018 across Liverpool’s public spaces, galleries, museums, civic buildings and online.
