Charm and Hex is a nine-color screen print produced on the occasion of Printed Matter’s 2019 Spring Dinner Party.
“The process of thinking about the intangible qualities of colored light, both in nature and in cinema, gave me a strange kind of optimism about the possibilities of disorientation and borderless thought in the current American culture of divisiveness. […] When we think about our origins, how is it that we are merely defined by national borders? What else might distinguish us from one another? What else might link us?” - Cauleen Smith
Signed and Numbered.
Cauleen Smith (b. 1967 in Riverside, California), an American interdisciplinary filmmaker and artist, describes her work as reflecting the everyday possibilities of the imagination. Smith’s subjects are, in her own words, “the fragile, the forgotten, the flawed, the fugitive.” Addressing topics ranging from social activism and protest, Black feminism and literature, to the environment, Smith’s work engages with the politics of Black identity, history, and experience, drawing on influences such as science fiction, the music of Sun Ra, and the parade culture of New Orleans.
