about

Juliana Irene Smith (b. 1977, San Francisco, USA; lives in Helsinki, Finland) is a half-Iranian, half-Californian artist whose practice examines generational trauma, identity, and memory through photography, text, material experimentation, and installation. Humor, vulnerability, and embodied storytelling shape a visual language that transforms difficult personal histories into spaces of connection, resilience, and critique.

Smith holds a BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design in New York and an MA in Public Art from the University of Applied Arts and Sciences in Lucerne, Switzerland. Before relocating permanently to Finland in 2017, she lived and worked in South Africa, Palestine, and Switzerland. In Cape Town, she co-founded and ran the artist-led nonprofit ALMA MARTHA.

She has participated in residencies such as Triangle Arts Workshops in Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine; Haus #99 in Basel; and Art Omi in the United States. Her teaching has included workshops and courses at Darat Al Funun (Amman), FUNDA (Soweto), UNRWA (Ramallah), Dar Al-Kalima (Bethlehem), the Art Preparatory Schools in Zug and Chur (Switzerland), and City Varsity in Cape Town. Smith also trained and volunteered as a rape-crisis counselor at the Rape Crisis Trust in Observatory, Western Cape—experience that deeply informs her trauma-conscious artistic approach.

Her selected exhibitions include the Central Switzerland Annual Exhibition at the Museum of Art Lucerne; the RIWAQ Biennale in Birzeit; Beneholz Space for Contemporary Art; Dienstgebäude Project Space; Why We Worry, Young Swiss Artists at Gallery Supernova, Riga; Cultural Transference at the Elizabeth Foundation, New York; the solo exhibition Lactose Intolerant at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte (Helsinki); The Others Art Fair (Turin); and If You Cannot Cry in the Subway at Oksasenkatu 11.

In 2024, she exhibited in the Haihatus 25th Summer Exhibition curated by Elham Rahmati, Pillow Talk curated by Ria Andrews at Vaasa Taidehalli, and made her Icelandic debut at the Hafnarborg Museum in the exhibition Unknown Benevolence, curated by Þórhildur Tinna Sigurðardóttir, presenting a two-story installation at the museum entrance. Recent exhibitions also include Summer Rain (Helsinki Art Hall), Scaredy Cat Boo! (Photographic Centre Peri, Turku), Saggy Wednesday (Verkligheten, Umeå), and Resident Landscape (Old Munch Museum, Oslo).

In October 2025, Smith published her first book, GOOD FEELINGS EVERY DAY, with Utu Press, launched at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in Helsinki.

Upcoming exhibitions in 2026 include the solo show Who’s Your Daddy at Titanik (Turku), A Little Bit Lost at K17 (Sipoo), and a solo exhibition at SIC Gallery (Helsinki).