Pinkie (I, II, III, studies), 2020 - 2025

Pinkie is a series inspired by two images: one, a 1990’s photograph of a young Black woman in a pink prom dress; the second, a painted portrait of a girl from the British Regency period. Through her ruched application of silicone and collagen, Smith conjures the connection between the young woman in the photograph and Thomas Lawrence's Pinkie (1794). Lawrence’s painting is one of the best-known portraits in the Huntington Library, a museum the artist visited often as a child with her mother.

The particular protrusions, excisions, and scars embedded within the work suggest an alternative understanding of “prettily pink”; finding terror in the romantic and grotesque in conventional beauty. Pinkie wants to get under our skin. Its sagging, fleshy materiality ultimately pushes the viewer toward a visceral sensory experience, one that coalesces two young women–one white, one black, both in some ways unnamed–into a form beyond recognition.

Pinkie (study), 2025. Materials: collagen, silicone, ribbon. 68" x 36". Installed in Hesse Flatow, NYC.

Pinkie III, 2023, materials: collagen, silicone, flesh clamps, ribbon, cotton rope
120" x 240" x 12". Installed in "Shapeshifting: Or, Synonyms for Skin" at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. — Pinkie III, 2023, materials: collagen, silicone, flesh clamps, ribbon, cotton rope 120" x 240" x 12". Installed in "Shapeshifting: Or, Synonyms for Skin" at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

Pinkie III, 2023. Installed in "west follies" at Caravan Gallery in Fort Worth, TX, 2025.

Pinkie (study), 2022. Materials: collagen, silicone, ribbon, rope. 54" x 36". Installed in "Viscera" at Simone Subal gallery in NYC.

Pinkie II, 2021, materials: collagen, flesh clamps, bees, false eyelashes, silicone, hair ties, glass beads, tulle, found photograph,
144" x 108" x 120". Installed in "Girl You Want" at ArtYard, Frenchtown, NJ. — Pinkie II, 2021, materials: collagen, flesh clamps, bees, false eyelashes, silicone, hair ties, glass beads, tulle, found photograph, 144" x 108" x 120". Installed in "Girl You Want" at ArtYard, Frenchtown, NJ.

Piece of Pinkie II, 2021. Collagen dyed with soda, silicone, baby powder, ribbon, flesh clamps, cotton rope, plaster melons
124" x 52" x 36". Installed in "Melon Skin" at M23 gallery in NYC. — Piece of Pinkie II, 2021. Collagen dyed with soda, silicone, baby powder, ribbon, flesh clamps, cotton rope, plaster melons 124" x 52" x 36". Installed in "Melon Skin" at M23 gallery in NYC.

Pinkie, 2020, Materials: collagen, fruit punch, latex, blue satin, fondant, earrings, sewing pins, baby powder, acrylic paint, Jolly Ranchers, eyelashes, hair ties, butterfly clips, cantaloupe, found hair dryer helmet, animatronic butterfly, white carpet. 144" x 108" x 156"