Uploaded May 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Watch xxxxx UNTITLED sketch no. 3000 (2021) by Sable Elyse Smith, the first video in the museum's latest season of Digital Commissions.
Sable Elyse Smith’s xxxxx UNTITLED sketch no. 3000 (2021) is a complex meditation on the repertoire of image-making possibilities and the post-cinematic visual tropes that have emerged over the last few years. Composed of found footage of James Brown dancing on stage, aerial views we increasingly associate with police chases, and upshots of driving down a street lined with palm trees, the images are superimposed by monochromatic blue squares that increasingly function as both placeholder and signifier of the (digital) void that remains to be filled. Halfway through the video, the opening chords of Daniel Kaede’s 2019 song “Lost Tale of Catalonia” sound, only to be slowed to an eerie soundscape.
Found and redacted images are looped, superimposed, and crossfaded, replicating digital and televisual platforms that are impossible to disentangle from the processes of racialization that undergird our social relations. By manipulating formal elements of the video, Smith reminds us that images are also manipulated, and that much of what we experience is subject to structures of domination.
Sable Elyse Smith is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator based in New York. Using video, sculpture, photography, and text, she points to the carceral, the personal, the political, and the quotidian to speak about a violence that is largely unseen, and potentially imperceptible. Smith’s work has been featured at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, Queens; the New Museum, New York; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, among many others. Smith has received awards from Creative Capital, Fine Arts Work Center, the Queens Museum, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Franklin Furnace Fund, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and Art Matters. She is currently assistant professor of visual arts at Columbia University.
Inaugurated in 2020, ICA Miami’s Digital Commissions series is made possible by the Knight Foundation and expands the museum’s commitment to fostering artistic experimentation and commissioning new works, as well as engaging audiences with innovative artistic voices. The projects have been organized by ICA Miami’s Director of the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center, Gean Moreno, and ICA Miami Curator Stephanie Seidel.
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Membership means more at ICA Miami. Join today for expanded access to a world of innovative art and ideas: icamia.org/support
#icamiami #icadigitalcommissions #sableeylsesmith
Watch xxxxx UNTITLED sketch no. 3000 (2021) by Sable Elyse Smith, the first video in the museum's latest season of Digital Commissions.
Sable Elyse Smith’s xxxxx UNTITLED sketch no. 3000 (2021) is a complex meditation on the repertoire of image-making possibilities and the post-cinematic visual tropes that have emerged over the last few years. Composed of found footage of James Brown dancing on stage, aerial views we increasingly associate with police chases, and upshots of driving down a street lined with palm trees, the images are superimposed by monochromatic blue squares that increasingly function as both placeholder and signifier of the (digital) void that remains to be filled. Halfway through the video, the opening chords of Daniel Kaede’s 2019 song “Lost Tale of Catalonia” sound, only to be slowed to an eerie soundscape.
Found and redacted images are looped, superimposed, and crossfaded, replicating digital and televisual platforms that are impossible to disentangle from the processes of racialization that undergird our social relations. By manipulating formal elements of the video, Smith reminds us that images are also manipulated, and that much of what we experience is subject to structures of domination.
Sable Elyse Smith is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator based in New York. Using video, sculpture, photography, and text, she points to the carceral, the personal, the political, and the quotidian to speak about a violence that is largely unseen, and potentially imperceptible. Smith’s work has been featured at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, Queens; the New Museum, New York; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, among many others. Smith has received awards from Creative Capital, Fine Arts Work Center, the Queens Museum, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Franklin Furnace Fund, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and Art Matters. She is currently assistant professor of visual arts at Columbia University.
Inaugurated in 2020, ICA Miami’s Digital Commissions series is made possible by the Knight Foundation and expands the museum’s commitment to fostering artistic experimentation and commissioning new works, as well as engaging audiences with innovative artistic voices. The projects have been organized by ICA Miami’s Director of the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center, Gean Moreno, and ICA Miami Curator Stephanie Seidel.
Stay connected: icamia.org/subscribe
Plan your visit: icamia.org/visit
Watch more on ICA Channel: icamia.org/channel
Membership means more at ICA Miami. Join today for expanded access to a world of innovative art and ideas: icamia.org/support
#icamiami #icadigitalcommissions #sableeylsesmith
