This Artist Explores How Systems and Infrastructures Impact Our Lives

Sable Elyse Smith, assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies in Visual Arts at School of the Arts, is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator. Using video, sculpture, photography, text, appropriated imagery, and performing arts, she points to, as she says, "the carceral, the personal, the political, and the quotidian to speak about a violence that is largely unseen and potentially imperceptible."

Her work has been featured at MoMA PS1, the New Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Brooklyn Museum, as well as other institutions. She has received awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Creative Capital, the Queens Museum, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Franklin Furnace Fund, and Art Matters, among other places. In 2022, Smith was a participant in both the Whitney Biennial and the 59th Venice Biennale.

Columbia News recently caught up with Smith to learn about her work, her teaching, and what comes next.

What is the single unifying thread that runs through your broad body of work?

A thread that runs through my work is an almost surgical investigation of the many ways both systems and infrastructures dictate and impact many aspects of our lives—numerous times, without our full realization of their presence or impact or imprint (control). There is will, and there is autonomy, and then there is the intricate way we’ve been networked into groups, futures, and outcomes, at times unbeknownst to us. Language is an architecture. This is central to my exploration of the world. Additionally, I have built a practice tracing the threads of violence and power embedded within systems of belief, infrastructure, language, intimacy, the quotidian, and beyond.

Your new opera, If you unfolded us, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art last summer. Was that your first time working on an opera?

Yes, that was my first experience working in opera, an evening-scaled performance work.

How does the intersection of teaching and creating art affect you? Is there an overlap?

Again, art is a practice of close looking. Even if my class is reading something or looking at work that I’ve discussed for multiple semesters with students before, each class always brings something new to the discussion. I am constantly struck with new things to consider and new ways to look. The exercising of this muscle is something that I definitely take back to the studio with me in my own practice. That is the most important element of the relationship between the two. 

What was your path to a career that combines art production and academia?

My personal education path first attracted me to the education space more generally, and then really motivated me to investigate both theory and practices around art education specifically. I have worked in education in museums, art schools, liberal arts schools, private and public universities, and in access, alternative, and mentorship capacities. My experience in education spans primary school-aged students to adults.

Experience and observation brought me to academia and the unique position of artist, which, in my personal understanding, is that of a witness or observer, making the two worlds or identities inextricable for me. I do different things in my role as an artist and my position as a professor, yet both require an attentive, critical, and sustained looking and then action.

What are you teaching this semester?

I’m teaching Senior Thesis, an undergraduate course for art majors, and Grad Studio, a course that focuses on individual artistic research for visual art MFA students. 

What are you working on now?

I am currently working toward two institutional solo exhibitions slated for 2026; one is at The Contemporary Austin, in Austin, Texas. The other show, along with a larger production of my opera project also scheduled for 2026-2027, have not been publicly announced yet.

What's special about teaching at School of the Arts and in New York?

New York is what’s special about teaching. I find the city itself more valuable than the physical classroom as a place for my students to explore and learn from. I’m spoiled teaching here honestly, and I’ve taught in other cities before. Teaching art is about seeing real life objects up close and personal, experiencing work, proximity, and context. I can describe a work in a classroom, but we’ll never understand it until we stand in front of it.

Because of the amount of culture and cultural institutions in this city, we have the opportunity to do that over and over again, and primarily for free. Make no mistake about it: New York has its own barriers to access. But for a semester  at a time, my students and I can make the city and its thinkers and makers our laboratory, and there is an incredible richness to that.