About
My recent paintings and performances engage the image as an extension of biological and technological imbalances and my complicit role in their function. Dragged through streets and washed in waters between Berlin and Dakar, the paintings accrue material and history. Hung in public spaces to provoke conversation, they question the design and function of society with and against nature. Other projects include re-writing colonialist cosmologies, performance rooted in Contact Improvisation dance, experimental sound, animation, photography, and video. As a curator I have run Pirsig Projects, served as Cultural Liaison to Tours, France; and initiated Blown Derivatives, an international collaboration that investigates socio-economic borders after 9/11. Memory Zero. A project for MIT’s journal ARTMargins, was published in 2023. Recently, my work has been at Schlossmuseum Linz, Austria and Partcours, Dakar, Senegal. I attended l’Académie Royale des Beaux Art, Brussels; the Boston Museum School; and the Sass-Fee Institute, Berlin. The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN has my work in its collection and also the Allard Pierson museum in Amsterdam, amongst others.
Sean Smuda
Born Minneapolis, Minnesota
Lives and works in Berlin, Dakar, Mpls
Selected Exhibitions (*solo show)
2025
The Turning of the Tide, St. Clement’s Art Centre, Ipswich, UK
Divided Planet (in conversation with Ruth Wolf - Rehfeld), Chert Lüdde Galerie, Berlin, DE
Kunststation Kleinsassen, Hofbieber-Kleinsassen, DE
2024
From Power Animal to Fear Animal, the Cultural History of Wolves. Curated by Mona Horncastle, Schlossmuseum, Linz, AT
Def Li War, Partcours 12, Kenu Lab’Oratoire/Chez-Toi Design, Dakar, SN
Reclaim Reality, Rosalux, Berlin, DE
2023
Borrow No Sorrow, Artothek, Berlin, DE
Peter Edel Haus, Berlin, DE
Dialoge, Milchhof Pavillon, Berlin, DE
2022
BLACKOUT, Endmoräne, Frankfurt Oder, DE
The Myth is Gone, Kulturkapellen, Berlin, DE
BLIND VISION, Rathenau-Hallen, Berlin, DE
2021
*#NO., Kuelbs Collection, NY, NY/Berlin, DE
Artspring, Berlin, DE
The One That Got Away, Traffic Zone Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, US
2020
Kurt Mühlenhaupt Museum, Berlin, DE
Striding Bodies, International Network of Performance Art, Brussels, BE
In Isolation Together, ArtCore Gallery, UK
Selected Publications
2026 Sutton, Elizabeth, Mapping, Cartography, Surveying as Empowering Practices, Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Visual Culture, vol. 1, NYC, US
2023 ARTMargins, Memory Zero, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, US
2020 Marcos, Imanuel, Unconventional Artist in Berlin, The Berlin Spectator, DE
Collections
Walker Art Center, US
Le Mairie, Tours, FR
Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam, NL
Selected Grants and Awards
2026 Ifa Künstlerkontakte Programme, Stuttgart, DE
2022 Neustart Kultur-Stipendium, Kunstfonds, Bonn, DE
2021 Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NYC, US
Presentations
2023 w/ARTMargins magazine founding editor Sven Spieker, Chert Lüdde Gallery, Berlin, DE, 08.07
2020 Artist talk, International Network of Performance Art, NYC, US, 12.12
2019 Artist talk and performance, Hopscotch Reading Room, Berlin, DE, 07.01
Related Experience
2022 “Robert Irwin, Light and Space”, video and editing of a month-long timeplase film, Kraftwerk, Berlin, DE
2021 “Goodbye, World”, curated by Raimar Stange and Andreas Templin. video and editing, Bothnian Bay, Lapland, SE 14.02
2011 – 14 Cultural Liaison, MPLS, MN, US > Tours, FR
Collaborative Projects
2018
Universal Capital, exhibition and marching band performance w/ Davu Seru and Treignac Project, FR
Requiem for the Roberts Building, performance and marching band. Minneapolis, MN, US
2009-2011
Blown Derivatives, exhibitions with the Iraqi American Reconciliation Project at: McMurdo Base, Antarctica; Jiangsu, China; Skågstrond, Iceland; Karbala and Najaf, Iraq; Lahore, Pakistan; See La, Tibet.
Curatorial Projects
2022 –25 Pirsig Projects, Berlin, DE
2018 Lettre Ouverte à la Commitée Invisible, Magasin Géneral, Tarnac FR
2017 –18 Beinnale Be-In-Alley and Pirsig Projects, Mpls, MN, US
2003 –14 Shoebox Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, US
Education
2018 Saas-Fee Institute, Berlin, DE
2001 –03 Minneapolis Community and Technical College, Mpls, MN, US
1981 – 82 School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, US
1980 –81 St. Mary’s College, Moraga, CA, US
1979 –80 Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Brussels, BE
Uccle Academy of Fine Arts, Brussels, BE
Reviews
On the Painting of Sean Smuda
by Raimar Stange
(translated from the German)
Painting stands at the center of Sean Smuda's multimedia art — a painting that is conceptually coded while at the same time arriving with painterly force. His works are mostly conceived as thematically cohesive series, and their individual paintings frequently enter into a many-voiced dialogue with the artist's performances and videos. Two thematic complexes above all define his content, which Smuda addresses with both critical engagement and artistic sensitivity: on the one hand the complex of "nationality-identity-postcoloniality," and on the other that of "ecology-technology-neoliberal capitalism."
Smuda's current ongoing project "False Flags," begun in 2025, was, as the artist himself writes, "brought into being to describe and counteract the increasingly powerful and destabilizing global narrative of reactionary nationalism and the use of AI as its instrument." At the center of "False Flags" are paintings that critically re-read national flags — for example those of the USA, Iran, and Senegal — through a painterly intervention similar to the process of cultural jamming. The colors of each flag are recomposed by the artist; their motifs are erased or varied. New motifs are also added in order to generate, with and against these national flags, deliberately new layers of meaning.
A significant example of this artistic strategy is the painting "Kingdom," 2026: in the middle and upper sections of the portrait-format work, the artist engages with the green, red, and white stripes of the Iranian flag and its two historical predecessors, while in the lower section it is the national flag of Qatar — a declared enemy of Iran — that Smuda artistically transforms. Four column-like forms serve as the central motif of the painting; at their upper ends they appear as factory chimneys with billowing smoke, at their lower ends as upside-down trees with female figures in them. In the upper left corner of the painting brown “Don’t Tread on Me” sausages are visible, in the upper right corner scattered animal bones. Environmentally destructive technology and human rights, consumption and its downsides are thus addressed in the context of the "Islamic Republic" of Iran — a country whose significant oil reserves make it an important driver of a global economy still relying on the fossil fuels accelerating climate change.
Smuda's series "Symbiotic Systems," 2020–2024, examines — with an almost analytical approach to painting — again to quote the artist, "the mutable systems of body, nature, and technology, for example how cells transform into circuits and these in turn into production lines, and vice versa." The painting "Exploded View," 2024, undertakes this investigation by way of a stylized IKEA assembly instruction, "exploded" in such a way that the individual components of the IKEA furniture appear as broken-open yet sovereignly self-contained elements. In the upper left corner Smuda has jammed the blue-and-yellow IKEA logo into MIKEA; in the upper right corner a standard household vacuum cleaner is visible. At the lower section of "Exploded View," finally, a flesh-colored amorphous organ is painted, entering into a tension-charged contrast with the otherwise rather techno-industrial character of the image. Black horizontal lines in the background of the painting subtly symbolize an I Ching reading that stands in declared contradiction to the mechanical (IKEA) system. The paintings of "Symbiotic Systems" are painted on felt, incidentally, in an allusion to Joseph Beuys, and "Exploded View" is understood by the artist additionally as a homage to Mike Kelley and his likewise system-critical art.
The paintings of the "Symbiotic Systems" series naturally belong to the genre of painting and thus to the artistic autonomy that characterizes this genre. Smuda, however, is not content with this assigned role; rather, he places his paintings in dialogic situations, and this in environments as different as Dakar and Berlin. There he shows his works in public spaces, inviting people to speak and think about his art — interactions that are then captured in short videos documenting these initiated exchanges. Before this, the paintings are exposed to wind and weather on location, dragged through streets, and cleaned in rivers or lakes. These paintings thus communicate not only with people but also with the environment. In this way the art succeeds in softening to some degree the supposedly irreconcilable opposites of autonomous painting and relational aesthetics — more precisely, their differing qualities of "sovereignly standing alone" and "socially acting together."
-Berlin, 2026
Raimar Stange (* 1960 in Hanover, lives and works in Berlin) is an independent curator and art publicist who writes for various art magazines including Flash Art, Milan; Kunst-Bulletin, Zurich; Springerin, Vienna; Camera Austria, Graz, and taz, Berlin. Stange has curated numerous exhibitions, including at L 40 | Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin; Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin; and at Kunst Haus Wien.
WHAT BERLIN ARTISTS CREATED DURING LOCKDOWN
by Kitty Doherty
Berlin Loves You, 08.21.2020
Blueprints
by Robert Batchelor
Professor of history and director of digital humanities at Georgia Southern University
17.11.2017
Capitol vs. Capital
by Ryan Fontaine
Art Hounds, 01.05.2017
Show lets artists draw a bead on gun culture
by Marianne Combs
MPR News, 10.17.2017
Universal Capital
by Sheila Reagan
Star Tribune, 12.09.2016
Art found a fit at Roberts Shoe Store, but now Shoebox Gallery must close
by Kristin Tillotson
Star Tribune, 11.19.2014
Walker acquires Sean Smuda artwork
by Kristin Tillotson
Star Tribune, 12.27.2013
Decoding: “Dreams and Allegories”
by Camille LeFevre
Mnartists.org, 3.26.2007