Pilgrim

Copied Cauleen Smith, Pilgrim, 2017, digital video, color, sound; 07:41 minutes, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the SJ Weiler Fund, 2020.54.2, © 2020, Cauleen Smith

Artwork Details

Title
Pilgrim
Date
2017
Location
Not on view
Copyright
© 2020, Cauleen Smith
Credit Line
Museum purchase made possible by the SJ Weiler Fund
Mediums
Mediums Description
digital video, color, sound; 07:41 minutes
Classifications
Subjects
  • Landscape
  • Architecture Exterior
Object Number
2020.54.2

Artwork Description

Smith's art and filmmaking has always been driven by histories of Black brilliance that resonate across time. Listening closely to the spiritual and musical philosophies of composer, performer, and swamini Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda (1937--2007) has inspired Smith's recent works. Smith's cinematic collages connect Coltrane's transformative visions to others who create spaces for liberation from the nineteenth century to the present.

In Pilgrim, Coltrane's experimental jazz piano unfurls as Smith's camera moves solemnly through the white ashram buildings and hillside setting of the Hindu community Coltrane founded in California. These scenes soon merge with the gothic spirals of Watts Towers, mid-twentieth-century folk sculptures in southern Los Angeles, before fading into a Shaker cemetery in upstate New York, where a pre--Civil War religious group lived the values of racial and gender equality.

Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies, 2023

Related Books

The cover of the publication Musical Thinking New Video Art & Sonic Strategies
Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies 
Exploring the powerful resonances between recent video art and popular music, the exhibition Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies features ten leading contemporary artists and the work.

Exhibitions

Media - 2020.54.1 - SAAM-2020.54.1_2 - 139600
Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies
June 23, 2023January 28, 2024
Musical Thinking explores the powerful resonances between recent video art and popular music.