Taking the White Gloves Off: A Performance Art Series in Honor of Lorraine O'Grady ‘55 features six multidisciplinary artists— Dominique Duroseau, M. Lamar, Tsedaye Makonnen, Nyugen E. Smith, Ayana Evans, and Eleanor Kipping —to accompany the exhibition Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And. As one of Wellesley College’s most esteemed alumnae in the arts, the Class of 1955 artist will be celebrated with a spectacular opening and symposium at the Davis Museum, a five-day artist residency at the Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities, and campus-wide events that will reach across all disciplines throughout the semester. The invited artists, who first convened as the performance art cohort at the Lunder Institute for American Art’s 2023 Summer Think Tank at Colby College Museum of Art, will pay tribute to O’Grady’s inspiration and legacy, with performances scheduled for February, March, and May on Wellesley’s campus.

Nyugen E. Smith is a Caribbean-American interdisciplinary artist based in Jersey City, NJ who works primarily in the areas of mixed media drawing, found object assemblage, and performance. His practice is interested in world-building, informed by the intersection of ritual, memory, language, history, and art-making processes that prioritize the re-use of discarded materials and objects, the body, and play, through the lens of Blackness. His process, of walking and observing to source materials, teaches him about spaces, landscapes, and the people who traverse them.

Nyugen holds a BA in Fine Art from Seton Hall University and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been presented at the Museum of Latin American Art, Peréz Art Museum, Museum of Cultural History-Norway, Frist Art Museum, Blanton Museum, Newark Museum, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, among others. Nyugen is the recipient of the Creative Capital Award, Leonore Annenberg Performing and Visual Arts Fund, Franklin Furnace Fund, Dr. Doris Derby Award, New Jersey State Council on the Arts grant, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.