If My Body Was A Gift, It Became A Sacrifice Concrete, Resin, Ratchet Strap 12 in x 11 in x 12 in 2022

Kayla Jean Smith is a multidisciplinary artist from Jacksonville, Florida. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Florida, where she specialized in sculpture and
printmaking. Smith’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, and the 9th
Annual Contemporary Cast Iron Art Conference in Berlin, Germany.

Working across mediums such as steel fabrication, metal casting, woodworking, printmaking, and oil painting, Smith engages with conceptual themes including gender, religion, labor, and the absurdity of human behavior. Her projects vary in scale and material, adapting to the conceptual demands of each piece.

Deeply committed to community and public art, Smith has created two large-scale sculptures for permanent public installation—one at the Josephine Sculpture Park in Frankfort, Kentucky, and another in her hometown of Jacksonville at the Seaside Sculpture Park.

Artist Statement

My work reveals the nuanced emotions and systemic challenges tied to the plight of womanhood. As a gender-nonconforming woman raised in the South, this struggle is compounded by the weight of silence, as these experiences are often invalidated or ignored. Using my hands, mind, and body to express my subjective experience through art has offered me moments of relief from this burden. By cultivating a vocabulary of personal iconography and universal symbolism, I capture a threatening reality shaped by societal, cultural, and historical forces. As I dissect the complex systems that reinforce these inequalities, I create opportunities to fight for agency and equity.

My practice engages with the intersecting forces of gender, religion, labor, and belief through conceptually driven, materially intensive processes. Drawing from traditions in sculpture, printmaking, and public installation, I work with cast iron, steel fabrication, woodworking, screen printing, and oil painting to examine the entanglement of power and identity. These materials become vessels for both critique and transformation, often layered with bodily forms, found objects, and industrial remnants.

Thematically, my work treads the space between satire and sincerity, confronting viewers with scenes that are surreal, charged, and often uncomfortable. By situating these works in both institutional and public contexts, I seek to collapse the boundary between personal narrative and collective experience. Ultimately, my work is a means of reimagining systems of control and offering spaces where social scripts may be questioned, disrupted, and rewritten.