Dianne Smith

Pronouns: She/Her

Dianne Smith is a Harlem-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores identity, memory, transformation, and the lived experiences of Black communities and the African Diaspora. Working across painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, and textile-based practices, Smith brings together personal history, cultural memory, and contemporary experience. Her work is rooted in storytelling, material exploration, and preserving ancestral knowledge, often creating spaces where history, movement, ritual, and community intersect.

Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions addressing a range of themes and mediums, including her solo exhibition Two Turntables and a Microphone at The Bronx Museum, which celebrated fifty years of hip-hop. She was one of three artists with solo presentations in Visions for Our Future, Echoes of Our Past at the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design, and her work has been included in The Way We Remember and the Uptown Triennial at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University.

Smith received the Nancy Graves Foundation Award and a Fulbrightfrom the United States Consulate General in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Herwork is included in collections including the National Museum ofWomen in the Arts, The Bronx Museum, the Brodsky Organization,and the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African AmericanArt.Smith was featured as a salon artist in Queen Rose Art House:World Building at Untitled Houston 2026.

Image Credits:

1.Headshot

2. From Pulp to Possibilities, 2024, butcherpaper and staples, 30' x 5'x 8

3. SunAn Muun Dance (Sun and Moon Dance), 2025, poly rope, teakwood, and chicken wire. 24" T.

4. Lil Fellas,2021. Archival digital pigment print, 20 x 20 in