In a conversation between Smith and Whitney director Adam Weinberg, the pair describe a tenet of Smith’s art as the act of “changing nouns to verbs.” In other words, Smith’s art aims to shift the role of Indigenous people as subjects that are mapped, or are the target of imperialist abstractions like defined frontiers, to that of mapmakers themselves. Smith’s mixed-media War-Torn Dress (2002) most overtly highlights the distinctions between the mapped and the mapmakers.
The Denison women’s swim and dive team will be the first in school history to be honored at the White House, which has hosted the tradition since 1865.