Alex Smith

2020 PEW FELLOW
Updated
5 Feb 2021

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Alex Smith sits on the edge of a stone table in a park, one foot up on one of the stone benches that surrounds it. He has dark skin and wears a cream-colored long sleeve t-shirt, black shorts, stylish sneakers, and a baseball cap.

Alex Smith, 2020 Pew Fellow. Photo by Ryan Collerd.

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Alex Smith stands against an exterior wall painted cream and brown, his hands folded in front of him. He has dark skin and wears a cream-colored long sleeve t-shirt, stereo headphones, and a black baseball cap.

Alex Smith, 2020 Pew Fellow. Photo by Ryan Collerd.

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Alex Smith sits in an office chair against a white wall featuring a few pieces of his artwork. A large office printer is visible to his left. He has dark skin and wears a half-white, half-black shirt covered in a white grid pattern and a black baseball ca

Alex Smith, 2020 Pew Fellow. Photo by Ryan Collerd.

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Pew Fellow Alex Smith, (s)untitled series. Photo courtesy of the artist.

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Pew Fellow Alex Smith, (s)untitled series. Photo courtesy of the artist.

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Pew Fellow Alex Smith, (s)untitled series. Photo courtesy of the artist.

“My work is a vessel for the spiritual, political, and psychosocial ushering of queer Black people into a future informed by our cultural needs and shaped by our dreams and imagination.”

Alex Smith is a speculative fiction writer, collage artist, and vocalist, keyboardist, and lyricist in avant-garde punk bands Rainbow Crimes and Solarized. He draws from influences like science fiction, Dadaism, and comic art, bending their conventions to frame the creativity, survival, and hopefulness of queer and Black people. He curates two recurring series: a queer sci-fi reading series titled Laser Life, which he also founded, and what Smith describes as a “retro-futurist electro mash-up art-jam,” Chrome City. “I want space to create worlds,” Smith notes, “within the minds of people searching for reflection of themselves, and in the practical world as well; active spaces embodied, emboldened and empowered by a cyberpunk retelling of our past, stitched together with whatever resources are available to grant us—queer Black people—access to the future.” Smith has lectured and held workshops on the practical application of Afrofuturism and sci-fi and fantasy tropes in art at Moogfest, Moore College of Art & Design, the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University, Vox Populi, and Swarthmore College.