"ONE LAST CRY"

One Last Cry is a new project by Akeem Smith: an exhibition presented after his residency at Lafayette Anticipations.

Sculptor and video artist Akeem Smith (b. 1991 in Brooklyn) grew up in the Waterhouse neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica. His work seeks to erase the distinctions between art, fashion and anthropology, and to challenge the standards of Western cultural iconography.

He is interested in the economics of image production in its political, social and commercial forms, and the role of the artist as archivist. For the past 13 years, Akeem Smith has been collecting a growing archive of photographs and videos that document dancehall culture from the 1980s to the 2000s. His recent work celebrates this popular Jamaican movement, largely absent from institutional archives.

Curator and Lafayette Anticipations’ director : Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel

PRODUCTION SUPPORT

For the first edition of Paris+ par Art Basel in 2022, the Galeries Lafayette Group chose to sponsor the Emerging Galleries sector and, in this context, to support the artist Akeem Smith by offering to produce a work with the support of the Fondation's production teams.

Akeem Smith is an multimedia artist who primarily creates installations from photographs and videos, who develops his practice between Philadelphia and Kingston based studios. During his residency at Lafayette Anticipations from April to October 2023, Akeem Smith benefited from financial support for production, access to the exceptional facilities of the Fondation’s workshops, and the support of the curatorial and production teams.

As official Partner of Paris+ par Art Basel, the Galeries Lafayette group supports the Galeries Émergentes sector for which Lafayette Anticipations awards an artist every year. Chosen by an international jury, the artist Akeem Smith produces new sculptures to be exhibited during Paris+ par Art Basel.