NADA Miami 2021

"Bundlehouse: Last Lap Pon de River" by Nyugen E. Smith is part of a larger series the artist began in 2005 called “Bundlehouses,” which are mixed media drawings as well as found object sculptures that recall the temporary shelters built by displaced migrants with whatever resources they have at hand (usually what they manage to bring with them or find where they camp). Bundlehouses speak powerfully and beautifully to the capricious circumstances and tenuousness and fragility of life in the contemporary world.

More broadly, Nyugen E. Smith’s work examines the universal human experiences of memory, trauma, and spirituality through the multifarious impacts of colonialism on the African diaspora. A first-generation Caribbean-American (born in Jersey City to Haitian and Trinidadian parents), Smith uses performance, found object sculpture, mixed media drawing, photography and writing to connect past upheavals with present political struggles.