Sunny A. Smith (they/them/he/him)
Artist | Educator | Institutional Leader
Sunny A. Smith is a queer, trans* nonbinary artist, educator, and institutional leader whose work investigates how history is constructed, remembered, and contested. Based in Yelamu and Huchiun (San Francisco Bay Area) on unceded Ohlone territory, Smith engages with craft, material culture, and collective storytelling to explore the power of objects in shaping historical narratives.
For over two decades, Smith has challenged dominant histories and amplified alternative perspectives—whether by reinterpreting the role of craft in nation-building, reconstructing historical events through participatory projects, or reactivating material archives in new ways. Their interdisciplinary practice spans sculpture, social engagement, craft, and installation, often interrogating how everyday objects reinforce or resist systems of power.
Smith’s work has been widely exhibited, including at P.S.1/MoMA, SFMOMA, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, MASS MoCA, and Palais de Tokyo, and is included in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, UCLA Hammer Museum, and LACMA. A sought-after public speaker, they have lectured at MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, SculptureCenter, and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, as well as at art schools and research universities internationally.
Their work has been recognized with major grants and fellowships, including support from United States Artists, Artadia, Public Art Fund, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Fleishhacker Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. They have participated in renowned residencies such as IASPIS, The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, MoMA’s Artists Experiment initiative, the International Studio and Curatorial Program, Artpace San Antonio, and Headlands Center for the Arts. Their projects have been featured in The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, NPR, Art21, and numerous media outlets and scholarly publications.
As an educator and institutional leader, Smith has spent over 25 years shaping arts education to ensure that curricula, museums, and archives reflect a more expansive and inclusive vision of history. They currently serve as Professor and Dean of Fine Arts at California College of the Arts, where they have supported initiatives that examine who is represented in arts institutions, whose stories are preserved, and how material practices shape collective memory. Their leadership focuses on mentoring artists, rethinking arts curricula, and building institutional structures that support a more engaged and critical approach to history and craft.
Smith’s recent work continues to interrogate the role of material culture in storytelling, historical reckoning, and generational inheritance. Their large-scale installation, The Compass Rose, commissioned by Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, explored the complex legacies of ancestry, colonization, and migration through craft, ritual objects, and archival materials.
Blending sculpture, video, and sound, The Compass Rose mapped Smith’s genealogy across 13 generations, tracing the movements of early European settlers, enslavers, and immigrants in their family lineage. The installation featured heirloom objects—some directly implicated in events like the Salem Witch Trials—reworked as instruments for time travel, magic, and repair. Through a series of pilgrimages and apprenticeships with traditional craftspeople, Smith activated these objects as tools of intervention, remembrance, and re-imagination.
The project built on their ongoing research into how inherited artifacts shape national mythologies and personal identities, drawing from theories of epigenetics, moral injury, and ancestral healing. The accompanying monograph includes dialogues with scholars and artists on themes of race, kinship, post-traumatic memory, and the politics of lineage.
At the core of Smith’s work is a belief that objects hold memory, craft is political, and history is not fixed—it is something we continuously shape and reclaim. Whether working within museums, archives, or educational institutions, they are committed to creating spaces where artists, thinkers, and makers can engage in critical dialogue and contribute to a richer, more layered understanding of the past and present.
