EMILY MAE SMITH (B. 1979)

Emily Mae Smith is known for her lively narrative oil paintings that offer sly social and political commentary. Her most prominent symbol is an anthropomorphized broom, which stems from Disney’s Fantasia (1940). The broom is simultaneously an artistic and domestic tool, allowing it to take on different meanings in Smith’s work. Here, the broom takes on the form of Medusa, one of the oldest examples of the hysterical female archetype. By assuming different guises, Smith’s broom offers commentary on gender, sexuality and capitalism. Smith says: “I’m working out of a symbolist tradition but with the 21st-century feminist painter’s lens aimed toward inclusion, agency and making space for new myths.”