Akeem Smith is a multidisciplinary artist and stylist, known for his influential and often under-the-radar collaborations using the discipline of styling to create symbolic messages from industrial objects (clothes) through a process of selection. His work is based around social studies, female agency, connecting current events to history, voyeurism of subcultures, examining the undistinguishable nuances/traits of black culture. Smith’s practice draws on the materials found in the urban realm and relates to the street’s significance as a site of both culture and commerce. The patina of the bricolage expresses a certain melancholy, enhanced by the artist’s archival impulse. While art, fashion, music, dance, and popular movements grew out of the shared realm of the street, this familiar spatial condition is gradually being replaced by the virtual. Cultural codes are leaving the physical site of the streetscape. Posters as loud public signifiers are succeeded by solitary screens, an aspect that reinforces the empathy and care with which Smith’s architectural ready-mades refer to improvised marketplaces. Within this ambiguity, the exhibition "Black Queen" Volume 1 transforms the gallery designed by the artist Heimo Zobernig into a hybrid setting, shifting between a theatrical experience against a marketplace backdrop, a club, or an unexpected, perhaps museological showcase, a kind of room-encompassing vitrine. ...
