Committed to the presentation of a diversified range of poetics and manners to understand photography as an art practice in current times, artmedia GALLERY is proud to host the A. Lilia Smith’s exhibition Where Memories Reside, which gathers the photographs included in the series of the same title produced by the artist from 2011 to 2015.

The series, whose point of departure rests on a poem dedicated by Smith to her deceased father, is a collection of images that directly focused on found objects and land and seascapes that she made in South Florida, mostly in its key string. This geographical space appears to have functioned as a resonating activator of the artist’s memories initially related to her close personal childhood experiences alongside her father in her native Cuba. Beyond that, South Florida was a huge stage where her father spent the later part of his life and where Smith relocates to and reconnects to her place of birth after living in California, her second home for more than thirty years.

With her photographs Smith elaborates a narrative that is more evocative than documental. It is far from being a descriptive or specifying fashion to account for events not restricted to a sequential order. She elects the black and white photography technique to reinforce the reminiscent mood of her series. Therefore, her images have a distinctive “classic” air, making them more timeless than precisely dated, according to the allusive and subjective approach she displayed.

The type of signs that Smith introduced in her images and the way she assumed their photographic rendition addresses issues such as life, loss, and memory —as a particular relationship between present and past— into a metaphorical visual meditation. Consequently, Where Memories Reside emphasizes the powerful possibilities that photography has as a tool for overcoming reality and creating poetry.

About the artist

Since childhood, A. Lilia Smith trained and performed in diverse types of artistic expressions, among them dance, singing and painting. While she is a clinical psychologist by profession, for the past decade she has resumed practicing writing and photography preferentially. Where Memories Reside is her first solo exhibition.

About the curator

José Antonio Navarrete has developed an extended international career as a curator, researcher, and critic of visual arts and culture. His lengthy bibliography focuses on topics of modern and contemporary art, with emphasis on how media technology has affected and transformed art practices. During this decade, he has also exhibited his artistic work.

About the gallery

artmedia GALLERY was founded in 2012. With a location in Wynwood Art District, Miami, Florida, the gallery has the mission to explore the vast possibilities of the expanded notion of art through media technology, with photography and video as its core interest.