about

JULIANA IRENE SMITH (b. 1977 San Francisco, USA, lives in Helsinki, Finland) is a half Iranian, half American artist who works with generational trauma through material memory, photography and installation. Prior to moving permanently to Finland in 2017, she lived and worked in Cape Town with her artists-run non-profit ALMA MARTHA, which ran from 2014 until 2018. She has a BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design in New York and a Masters in Public Art from the University of Applied Arts and Sciences in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Residencies include three Triangle Arts Workshops in Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine, Haus #99 in Basel and Art Omi. She has taught a performance in public art workshop at Darat Al Funun in Amman, as well as at FUNDA in Soweto; photography and video at UNRWA in Ramallah, at Dar Al Kaliyma in Bethlehem, Art Context and Photography at the Art Preparatory School in Zug and Chur, Switzerland and at City Varsity in Cape Town. She trained and worked as a volunteer Rape Crisis Counselor at the Rape Crisis Trust in Observatory, Western Cape.

Selected exhibitions include the Central Switzerland Annual Exhibition at the Museum of Art Lucerne, RIWAQ Biennale in Bir Zeit, Palestine, Beneholz Space for Contemporary Art, Dienstgebaude Project Space, and in the Young Swiss Artists exhibition, Why We Worry at Gallery Supernova in Riga, Latvia, and Cultural Transference, at Elizabeth Foundation in NYC, a solo exhibition entitled, Lactose Intolerant, at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in Helsinki, the Others Art Fair in Turin, and If you cannot cry in the Subway at Oksasenkatu 11. In 2024 she exhibited at the Haihatus 25th Summer Exhibition curated by Elham Rahmati, Pillow Talk curated by Ria Andrews at the Vaasa Taidehalli and for the first time in Iceland at the Hafnarborg Museum for a group exhibition Unknown Benevolence curated by Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir, where she had a two story installation at the museum entrance. In 2025 she will exhibit in the Taidehalli Helsinki summer exhibition curated by Eeva Holkeri and have three solo exhibitions, Prune Juice, Saggy Wednesday and Scaredy Cat - Boo!