Heather Kai Smith

Heather Kai Smith is an artist from Calgary, Alberta, currently living and working in Vancouver. Rooted in drawing as a practice, her work includes animation, illustration, and printmaking. Recent bodies of work engage with legacies of feminist protests, such as the Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment (1983-94). These graphite-on-paper works show women in meetings, marching, and at social gatherings from the 60s, 70s and 80s. Through hand drawing and installation, Smith seeks to activate historical, archival images as a way to rearticulate revolutionary desires and activism in a contemporary context. Smith is also the founder of Great Women Animators, an online database aimed at educating, disseminating and championing the work of an international group of women animators from the last century.
Smith completed her MFA at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2017, and graduated with a BFA in Drawing from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2009, Calgary, AB. Her work has been shown at Access Gallery (Vancouver), Contemporary Calgary, Jarvis Hall Fine Art, TRUCK Contemporary Art (Calgary), and DNA Artspace (London, ON). She is a participant in phase 2 of Leaning Out of Windows, a multi-year art and physics collaboration project between ECUAD and TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre. Smith has attended residencies in Germany and across the United States and has participated in workshops, festivals and exhibitions across Canada and the United States. Her short films have been screened at the 10th Annual Athens Animfest, Athens, Greece; La Vidéothèque Nomade, 68 Septante, Brussels, Belgium; Women Making Waves Festival, Halifax, NS; and Ignite! Festival of Emerging Artists, Calgary, AB, Canada.