A Moment in the Sun

From March 8—April 28, 2018, Assembly’s public storefront gallery will host A Moment in the Sun, a project by Tiffany Smith that will use the gallery for an evolving multimedia work and as an active photo studio for creating empowering portraits of her subjects. Throughout her gallery activation, Smith will stage and photograph new images for the series’ “A Woman, Phenomenally” and “For Tropical Girls...” In addition, Smith will host open-studio photo sessions to create images for her “Throned” series that centers on the use of a high-back wicker throne/peacock chair in a scene staged with props, decorative backdrops, and plant life. "Throned" takes inspiration from traditions of West African portrait photography and the cultural practice of using the wicker throne peacock chair at social gatherings and celebrations in black and brown communities. Using the throne chair as both a central photo prop and a symbol of empowerment, Smith will activate her set with workshops, training session, and as an open platform for visitor photos.

Similar to Recess’s Session program, which allows artists to pursue works in progress in a public setting, Assembly artists are afforded the opportunity to activate and add to the space cumulatively, creating an evolving, constantly changing exhibition.

Underlying Smith’s gallery activation is an awareness of the complex history of portraiture and the role photography has played in proliferating exoticized and stereotyped representations of people of color. If nothing else, portraiture offers a physical depiction of our identities and a site in which the power of those depictions can be called into question—offering a space where one can author imagined and invented personas, assert new narratives of who they are, and reclaim the terms of their representation. Smith explores the portrait as a space of play and masquerade in which fact and fiction co-mingle and through which individuals can challenge and rewrite mass culture representations of beauty, power, and value.

In addition to her work on A Moment in the Sun in the Assembly gallery space, Smith will participate as a guest teaching artist during the Recess’s educational diversion program. She will collaborate with the program’s lead teaching artist Shaun Leonardo to incorporate material from her project into the program’s curriculum. Smith will also guide program participants in creating final projects that, once complete, will appear alongside her work in the storefront gallery.

In January 2017, Recess launched Assembly to serve as an artist-led alternative to incarceration while empowering young people to take charge of their own life story and imagine a positive future through art. Through the 40-week Peer Leader program, our young people are exposed to various mediums of art making, careers in the arts, and internships at arts and culture spaces around the city as a pathway to a career in the arts. A guest artist joins each new cohort of the program and collaborates with youth on a project in our public storefront gallery.