Books
What I’m Reading:
Anj Smith
Photo: Kasia Bobula
Ducking out of a cloudburst into the low-lit refuge of the British Library, I recently discovered a phenomenal gem. Behind glass, a presentation of manuscripts by medieval women included a 12th-century story “Bisclavret,” of a nobleman trapped in werewolf form, with eccentric elaborations also drawn by the author—Marie de France. I was hooked.
One of her stories in particular stood out: “Laüstic.” In the literal narrative, lovers ingeniously circumnavigate a communication ban via a nightingale’s song. When the husband of one of the lovers discovers the ploy, he viciously kills the bird. However, enshrouded carefully in embroidered samite, it becomes an exchanged lover’s token, forever expressing the victorious love that brute force sought to deny.
For me, the story gorgeously evoked the act of painting, resonating with compulsions to express the intangible and rework dead languages in a way that encapsulates sidelined human experience. Permeating Marie’s tale is a committed intention to disrupt oppression in language antithetical to it. We now live in times that normalize simplified public rhetoric, shutting down criticality. Marie’s forcefulness feels astonishingly countercultural in its invitation to refuse.
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“Anj Smith: The Sequin-Strewn Night” opens at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood on 29 October 2025.
Anj Smith negotiates the space between portraiture, landscape and still life. In her interrogation and celebration of painting, alluring flora and fauna—from vines, flowers and diverse creatures to ambiguous nudes—populate ecologically devastated landscapes. Refusing fast consumption, her work explores gender, ecology, anxiety and eroticism.