Siena Smith
Womxn @ Work 2024

“As a womxn of color, I feel so grateful and proud to come from a lineage of workers, givers, lovers, shouters and creatives. Their love, fight, resistance and collectivity has taught me how to survive and take care.

There’s an enormous amount of pressure, honor and responsibility I feel, as a Black womxn artist and teacher, to support my community and the next generation of creatives. It is an incredible weight but also a privilege to be able to create, think, learn and support people through their process, thinking and practice.

My family raised me to know the pain and struggle of life but to still love and leave the world a little better than when you came into it.”

Siena Smith (she/her, b. 1996, NYC) is an artist who works with drawing, Jacquard weaving and collage to work out the complexities of everyday emotions, Black womanhood, ancestry and movement. She earned her BFA in Textiles from RISD and an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is interested in how repetition, tactility, material and texture of textile and 2D mediums carry the essence of Black Diasporic personal, cultural and spiritual histories.

Smith has exhibited at Chela Mitchell Gallery, DC (2023); NADA Miami (2022); George Washington Carver Museum, Texas (2021); White Cube, UK (2021); Martha’s Contemporary, Texas (2020, 2021); and Something Special Studios, New York (2020).

Smith currently lives and works in Providence, RI. Ways that she tries to stay sane include visiting her family in Boston, creating RnB/hip-hop/Afrobeats playlists, making guacamole and drinking iced tea.