Courtney Smith is an artist based in Brooklyn working in sculpture and performance. Her sculptural work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America. After a twenty-year solo career as a sculptor, starting in Rio de Janeiro in the mid-nineties, she shifted her practice to focus exclusively on Konantü, an ongoing series of participatory performances that she established in 2015 with her collaborator and long-time partner Iván Navarro.
Konantü was created as an alternative to standard object-based and exhibition-oriented art, which is the background of both Smith and Navarro as sculptors, by proposing the exhaustive consummation or public distribution of the objects connected to the work. Konantü proposes a collective experience, an art made from a connective chain of diffused authorship, an art that is shared, adaptable, free, and eludes commodification.
Her solo work has been shown in Latin American institutions such as the MAM -São Paulo, MAM-Rio de Janeiro, Museo de Bellas Artes-Buenos Aires among others, including the 24th Bienal de São Paulo, the 8th Bienal de la Habana; and in institutions in Europe such as the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Culturgest in Lisbon and the Whilhelm-Hack Museum in Germany, and Museo Sperimentale d’Arte Contemporanea in Aquila, Italy. In New York her work has been shown in galleries and museums including PS1/MoMA, Museo del Barrio, the Chelsea Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Arts and Design. Konantü works have taken place in a variety of formal and improvised spaces, from empty buildings and public parks to galleries and institutions, in the form of workshops and participatory performances. Recent Konantü works include Flor de Loto (2024) at Teatro Bio Bio, Concepción, Chile, Vid Vida Vidajena (2024) at Capilla Azul in Chiloe, Chile, El Paso (2023) for Hawapi Out of Context at PS 122 Gallery in New York, Panorama (2022) and Remolino de Suerte (2021) for Van Alen Institute in Brooklyn, NY, Gira-Sol (2022) at Revolver Galería in New York, NY, Lotus Pool at the 13th Cairo Biennale, Treccia (2019) at MACRO Museum, Rome; Trenza (2019) at Sala de Máquinas, Santiago de Chile; Rodeo at Chicago Manual Style in Chicago; Colóquio (2018) at Casa do Povo in São Paulo, Brazil; Paradero (2018) at Casa Wabi in Mexico; The Ring (2017) produced by LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) in Los Angeles; Patria Ley Dios (2017) at HAWAPI residency in Tacna, Peru and Quadrilla de Yungay (2016) performed in multiple public locations, produced by the Siemens Foundation in Santiago de Chile.