LINDA SMITH


ARTIST BIO & STATEMENT

Linda Smith is a New York City-based artist and art educator whose work explores themes of time, memory, and human connection through photography and video. With a deep commitment to social engagement, she founded the TEOH Project while living in Kigali, Rwanda—a nonprofit that provides cameras and art education to children in Rwanda, Ghana, and the Bronx, NY. Her passion for using art as a tool for empowerment and healing has led to a commission by the United Nations, where she facilitated photographic workshops for survivors and former perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Smith earned her BA from Syracuse University and an MFA from the University of Connecticut. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the United Nations, various embassies, and universities such as James Madison University in Virginia and the University of Cincinnati.

In her ongoing series David & Rosemary, Smith examines the intimate, evolving relationship between a mother and her disabled son over nearly two decades. Through abstracted images of David in water—moments of freedom and fluidity—the work reflects on notions of care, movement, and transformation.

Her broader practice, including Absence & Presence, engages with transitory spaces between materiality and impermanence. Whether through photography, sculpture, or video, Smith’s work continuously navigates the interplay between presence and absence, desire and loss, the ephemeral and the enduring.