ARTIST STATEMENT
My work explores the emotional and cultural dimensions of material life—how commodities shape identity, memory, and power. Through painting, I investigate the everyday objects and systems that define our desires, values, and relationships. While I often depict commodities—both tangible and digital—as vessels of personal attachment, I am equally attuned to the humanity they obscure or reveal.
In Home, a pile of umbrellas and personal belongings becomes a quiet monument to those living without shelter or security, evoking both fragility and resilience.
Having grown up in post-Cultural Revolution China and later immersed in American consumer culture, I examine the tensions between visibility and erasure, abundance and neglect. My work invites reflection on how we are shaped by what we consume—and what, or whom, we choose to overlook. I am interested in the shifting boundaries between subject and object, and in the ways art can bear witness to both personal and collective conditions.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
San Francisco Bay Area artist Siana Smith earned her MFA in Fine Art Painting from the California College of the Arts in 2021. Her oil paintings delve into consumerism, attachment, and humanity. Siana’s work has been exhibited nationally at venues like The De Young Museum, the New York Academy of Art, Euphrat Museum in Cupertino, the Triton Museum of Santa Clara, Southern Arkansas University, the Haggin Museum, and NUMU Los Gatos. Recently, her painting was shown at the London Biennial 2025.
© Siana Smith