Beginning this November, British artist Anj Smith will debut work from her latest series of paintings in ‘Drifting Habitations,’ her first New York solo exhibition in nearly a decade. Known for intimate, intricately rendered canvases that explore themes of identity, eroticism, anxiety and ecology, Smith’s new work takes on a larger scale to explore notions of atopia, a concept beautifully elucidated by Roland Barthes as ‘drifting habitations,’ through subverting the genre of the female nude. Set within ecologically devastated landscapes, Smith’s gorgeous but unsettling canvases challenge the notion of fixed locations and invite us to consider the fluidity of our experiences and perceptions of the world. Delving into the complex relationship between self and space, Smith’s luminous works question the very nature of our connections to the environments we inhabit.
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