Alexandria Smith was seated at her dining room table when a copy of June Jordan’s Directed By Desire (2005) arose from its slumber on an adjacent bookcase, sprouted wings, soared off the shelf, and landed squarely on her shoulder. “I believe in spirits and ghosts… June definitely knocked the book off the shelf,” she remembers, and so begins the origin story of The Three Graces (2026), a research-based drawing I commissioned Smith to compose for Jupiter Issue 007: Architecture.

This moment of literary levitation reminded her of an Instagram post shared by fellow artist Simone Leigh about Skyrise for Harlem: an architectural intervention Jordan envisioned alongside R. Buckminster Fuller. In 1964, Jordan was commissioned by Esquire magazine to write an article about the revolt that erupted in Harlem following the police murder of fifteen year old James Powell. As noted by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, “rather than explain any of that, Jordan responded with a dream. She proposed a collaboration with the architect R. Buckminster Fuller: a radical/visionary redesign of Harlem to create an environment where such events were not possible.” Though the project never came to fruition, it has supplied ample speculation-fuel for those who wish to think alongside and reshape Harlem’s built environment, as Smith enacts with The Three Graces.

In an effort to physically embed the drawing within the architectural landscape that Jordan was so intent on reimagining, the work will be on view from September 13 through November 15, 2026 in the window of Long Gallery Harlem, which overlooks Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard.

– Camille Bacon (Editor-in-Chief, Jupiter Magazine)

Artist Bio

Alexandria Smith was born in the Bronx, New York and earned her BFA in illustration from Syracuse University, New York; MA in art education from New York University; and MFA from Parsons The New School. Smith was a public and charter school art teacher in Harlem and the South Bronx for over a decade.

Smith is the recipient of many awards, fellowships, and residencies such as the Queens Museum/Jerome Foundation and Fine Arts Work Center Fellowships, Skowhegan, MacDowell, Yaddo, LMCC, and Civitella residencies and a Pollock-Krasner Grant. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is in many public collections such as The Studio Museum in Harlem, Mt. Holyoke College Art Museum, Longlati Foundation, and the K Museum of Contemporary Art.

Smith lives and works in New York and is Director of Undergraduate Studies in Studio Art and Assistant Professor in Painting and Printmaking at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Alexandria’s most recent solo exhibition entitled “in this here place, we flesh” was held at David Castillo Gallery in Miami, FL.

Curator Bio

Camille Bacon is a Chicago-based cultural worker. She is building a “sweet black writing life” as inspired by the words of poet Nikky Finney and the infinite wisdom of the Black feminist tradition more broadly. She currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Jupiter Magazine: an arts and culture publication and programming platform, which she co-founded in 2024. In addition to stewarding Jupiter, Camille manages McArthur Binion’s studio, is a member of the Board of Trustees at the Poetry Foundation and sits on the Cultural Advisory Committee for the city of Chicago. She formerly held positions at the Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY) and GRAY Gallery (Chicago, IL) and is a graduate of Smith College (Northampton, MA), where she studied chemistry and Black studies.

Through a methodology that straddles rigorous research and divinely derived oration, she aims to excavate how aesthetics can catalyze a collective reorientation towards relation, connection and intimacy and away from apathy and amnesia. Ultimately, her work serves as the external embodiment of her commitment to amplifying the wayward ingenuity of the Black creative spirit. Camille’s work has appeared in i-D Magazine, Frieze, Studio Magazine, Momus, and Burnaway, among other outlets. She currently manages McArthur Binion’s studio in Chicago, IL and formerly held positions at GRAY Gallery, Chicago, IL, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY. She has moderated public conversations with notable contemporary artists such as Richard Hunt, Caroline Kent, and Amanda Williams and has spoken at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), The Arts Club of Chicago (Chicago), Cooper Union (New York), and MOCA Georgia (Atlanta). She is a proud graduate of Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, where she studied chemistry and Black studies. In 2025 she was appointed to the board of the Poetry Foundation and the Cultural Advisory Committee for the city of Chicago.

Alexandria Smith: The Three Graces

Artist Bio

Curator Bio

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