Residency in progress
SMITH
- Photography
- Visual arts
A crossing between the Marshall Islands and Japan
SMITH – Artist-researcher, born in Paris, lives, works and dreams in Paris and the Médoc Atlantique region. His work explores the porous boundaries between the visible and the invisible, the human and the superhuman, science and spirituality. Through his photographs, sculptures, installations, films and performances, SMITH develops an interdisciplinary practice that draws on both cutting-edge technologies (thermal cameras, biotechnological implants, aerospace devices) and spiritual and physical practices (trance, meditation, psychedelic practices, subcutaneous implantation of meteorites). His research questions how our bodies, traversed by spectral information, can become places of experimentation and transformation. Working and dreaming with scientists, writers, astronauts, shamans and composers, SMITH constructs works-worlds where metamorphosis, survival and attention to the ghosts of the present come together.
SMITH
His projects have been presented in numerous institutions in France and abroad, such as the Centre Pompidou, the Palais de Tokyo, the Rencontres d’Arles, Le Fresnoy, the BNF, LACE in Los Angeles, the Centre Vox in Montreal, and the Museum of Photography in Helsinki. Winner of the Villa Albertine, the CNES weightless residence, LabVerde in the Brazilian Amazon, and a teacher at the schools of Arles and Le Fresnoy, SMITH is represented by the Christophe Gaillard gallery in Paris.
Nine monographs are devoted to his work, including Löyly (Filigranes, 2013), Saturnium (Actes Sud, 2018), Valparaiso (André Frère, 2019), Désidération (prologue) (Textuel, 2021), Desiderea Nuncia (Palais books, winner of the Book Prize at the Rencontres d’Arles 2022) and the most recent Dami (Filigranes, 2025). He is the author of several short films, including Spectrographies, co-produced with the Centre Pompidou in 2013, TRAUM (2015) and Les Apocalyptiques (2019), podcasts (France Culture, 2020), choreographic shows (TRAUM (Le cas Y), 2018) and performances. Together with Nadège Piton (via their studio Superpartners), he is editing the bilingual book Transgalactique (The Eyes, 2020) on trans and queer presences in the history of photography, which will be the subject of an exhibition at the Gaité Lyrique in 2024.
A solo exhibition will be dedicated to his work from 23 May 2026 to 31 January 2027 at the MAC Val.
The project
“During the crossing between the Marshall Islands and Tokyo, my intention is simple: to immerse myself completely. I am not coming to sea to collect a subject or accumulate data, but to make myself available and create from that availability. To make the crossing a field of attention, a laboratory of presence. To observe, feel and listen to the changes in light, the state of the ocean, the wind patterns, fatigue, joy, rhythm and, above all, the subtle shifts in my own perception.
I want to be attentive to what is unfolding around and within me, as a single continuum. My protocol is based on a daily practice of transcendental meditation and self-induced cognitive trance, similar to diving or freediving techniques, where descent and submersion allow me to traverse the layers of the mind in search of that state where separations no longer operate.
The next step is to confront these observations with the concrete reality of the crossing: the boat, the rolling, the wind, the weather, the sounds, the crew, the vigilance, using tools that are like sensory prostheses for me: thermal camera, camera, and microphone, will allow me to capture what escapes the naked eye: heat gradients, invisible flows, the skin of the ocean, presences in the night manifesting themselves through slow, attentive writing, as close as possible to what is happening.” SMITH
Discover some of his creations inspired by life aboard Tara:
Soon