In November 2020, one of America’s leading artists Cauleen Smith presented her ‘COVID MANIFESTO’ curated in collaboration with The Showroom, London on the Piccadilly Lights giant screen. Smith rewrote and revealed each point of the Manifesto throughout the duration of November. In a sort of ‘living’ still life, the artist’s desk became the tableau, in which personal items, remnants of daily rituals, and key references to her practice accumulated, appeared and disappeared. ‘COVID MANIFESTO‘ consisted of 23 pronouncements. The project unfolded in a sequence, a crescendo, that was punctuated by 7 intermissions selected from Smith’s existing works. Over the month, the personal and poetic, the eventful and now historical featured as Smith responded to COVID-19 and its multiple aftermaths.

Shop

SCREEN LOCATIONS

For 365 days since, 50 artists (and counting) have presented new and immediate responses to the NOW across a growing network of screens in London, Tokyo, Times Square, Milan, Melbourne, Dublin and Seoul – sparking a dialogue both online and in the public space.
Over the course of several journeys around the sun, CIRCA is now far from where it departed. From one screen in Piccadilly Circus, we have grown into a global gallery without walls.

Play Pause

London, Piccadilly Lights

Experience COVID Manifesto by Cauleen Smith every evening at 20:20 BST/GMT (1-30 November 2020) on the iconic Piccadilly Lights screen.

View screen locations

Cauleen Smith and the Journey to a Better Future

Written by Charlie Colville

Responding to the lack of art available for public viewing since the start of the pandemic, a new platform for the creation and exhibition of digital art was launched in the heart of Piccadilly Circus. Known as CIRCA, the platform allows for artists to showcase their work and ideas in the form of a two-minute video on the Piccadilly Lights, one of London’s most famous landmarks.

Following the success of last month’s collaboration with Ai Weiwei, CIRCA continue to promote artists from across the globe. This month, we get to know the work of Cauleen Smith through a collaboration with London-based arts organisation The Showroom, marking CIRCA’s first collaborative project with another public art space.

For those who haven’t heard or seen much of her work, Cauleen Smith is an American filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist whose work primarily examines the African American identity with relation to both historical and current social, political, and economic circumstances. Using these themes to structure her practice, Smith often encourages her spectators to engage with their imagination to envisage possible futures and act on them.

Press

Press Release
It's Nice That
The New York Times
Vogue Italia
Harpers Bazaar
Elephant Magazine
Art Review

Cauleen Smith in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist

Cauleen Smith and the Black Radical Imagination

Cauleen Smith and the Journey to a Better Future

The Showroom

Jefferson Hack: Class of 2021

Gallery

Biography

Cauleen Smith

Cauleen Smith (born 1967) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work reflects upon the everyday possibilities of the imagination. Operating in multiple materials and arenas, Smith roots her work firmly within the discourse of mid-twentieth-century experimental film. Drawing from structuralism, third world cinema, and science fiction, she makes things that deploy the tactics of these disciplines while offering a phenomenological experience for spectators and participants.