Melanie Smith was born in England in 1965. She lives and works between Mexico City and London. Her work, in diverse media, has reflected on the extended field of painting within the history of art and its entanglement with moving image. In earlier pieces, she illustrates the idiosyncrasies of multitudes, chaos, and aberrant forms within urbanism. Later works extend towards the effects of extractivism on specific ecosystems and environments in Latin America.

The spiral and the palimpsest are recurring forms of thought mode, working as double helices that entwine relationships between industrialization, nature, body, archaeology, and scale. She is interested in fragmented montages and creates filmic and performative experiences that often allude to behind-the-scenes productions and political farce. Mostly, her work shatters any rational significance as a way of thinking through contingent forms and being.

She has exhibited at numerous institutions, including PS1 and MOMA, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, and Tate Modern, London; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Museo Tamayo, and MUCA Campus UNAM, Mexico City; Museo Amparo, Puebla; The Modern, Fort Worth; and SITE Santa Fe Biennial, Santa Fe.

In 2011, she represented Mexico at the 54th Venice Biennale. In 2018, she was included in the Liverpool Biennial. Melanie Smith: Farce and Artifice, a panoramic survey, was presented at MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona in 2018, and traveled to MUAC Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, UNAM, Mexico City, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico, 2019, and MARCO Monterrey in 2020.

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