Studio170 - "Gathering" An Installation and Performance by Shane Charles Smith with Kayva Wang

Gathering, the latest exhibition by Shane Charles Smith, deals with the shift between appearance and disappearance and the divide of generational loss. His series Native Soil (2015-2020) commemorated his father’s work as the Penobscot surveyor after the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act. Hand-stitched hemp with soil from these lands, mixed with ash and paint, take the form of mapped terrain. Now, with Gathering, Smith has reimagined a work from this series in memoriam to his father, who passed on Memorial Day, 2020. He incorporporated pieces commissioned from Maine-based craftsmen to create new work for this exhibition, which also features movement-based artist Kayva Yang. These works in their entirety are a meditation on the “body in the landscape,” as well as on the responsibility and representation within the personal history of Smith’s heritage.

Supported by the Goethe-Institut Boston, Gathering marks an important continuation in Smith’s work, emphasizing temporality, from the ephemeral to the sculptural. As is characteristic of his singular creations, Smith uses raw form materials (e.g., beeswax, clay, ash) for large-scale, process-based, and performance-aligned works.