ÉTAT HER
Art

Sable Elyse Smith Turns Prison Waiting-Room Chairs Into Children's Toys, Dismantling Institutional Violence One Object at a Time

Sable Elyse Smith's solo show "Clockwork" lands at The FLAG Art Foundation in New York, using neon, video, and sculpture to examine how incarceration and surveillance seep into everyday language and objects.

Yu-Jie Huang, Home & Design Editor
Sable Elyse Smith Turns Prison Waiting-Room Chairs Into Children's Toys, Dismantling Institutional Violence One Object at a Time

A plastic chair from a prison waiting room, taken apart and reassembled into the pointed star shape of a child's game of jacks. It's the most direct piece in Sable Elyse Smith's solo exhibition "Clockwork" — twisting the most emotionally flat piece of institutional furniture into something a kid might crouch on the floor to play with. Another set of chairs from the same source is broken down into cross shapes and mounted on the wall, hovering somewhere between punishment, play, and religious symbol, with no clear answer offered.

"Clockwork" previously showed at The Contemporary Austin, and opens at The FLAG Art Foundation in New York on September 24, running through February 13, 2027. Smith is the recipient of the 2026 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, and the New York presentation amplifies the work's cinematic quality into an almost stage-like immersive space, spanning sculpture, video, neon, and photography.

Two video works form the axis of the exhibition. The 2021 piece "LAUGH TRACK, OR WHO'S THAT PEEKING IN MY WINDOW" is shown alongside "skin suit" (2026), a new work made for this prize. Both splice together found and original footage drawn from reality TV's familiar cop-chase sequences and body-cam recordings. The source material already carries a thriller's pacing, and Smith deliberately pushes viewers to shift between suspense, absurdity, and discomfort, forcing a direct confrontation with the biases already embedded in this kind of imagery.

The neon works, meanwhile, treat language itself as a battleground. Smith borrows the visual vocabulary of commercial signage and government notices, letting text that can replicate bias also be twisted into something else entirely — the exhibition doesn't specify which phrases exactly, but this thread shares the same logic as the sculpture and video: familiar, everyday objects, once rearranged within the context of surveillance and incarceration, can never be read the same way again.

Ticket information was not provided in the source materials.

Sable Elyse Smith Turns Prison Waiting-Room Chairs Into Children's Toys, Dismantling Institutional Violence One Object at a Time
Sable Elyse Smith Turns Prison Waiting-Room Chairs Into Children's Toys, Dismantling Institutional Violence One Object at a Time
Sable Elyse Smith Turns Prison Waiting-Room Chairs Into Children's Toys, Dismantling Institutional Violence One Object at a Time
Sable Elyse Smith Turns Prison Waiting-Room Chairs Into Children's Toys, Dismantling Institutional Violence One Object at a Time
Sable Elyse Smith Turns Prison Waiting-Room Chairs Into Children's Toys, Dismantling Institutional Violence One Object at a Time
Sable Elyse Smith Turns Prison Waiting-Room Chairs Into Children's Toys, Dismantling Institutional Violence One Object at a Time
Sable Elyse Smith Turns Prison Waiting-Room Chairs Into Children's Toys, Dismantling Institutional Violence One Object at a Time

Tags#Sable Elyse Smith#FLAG Art Foundation#Clockwork#當代藝術#監禁議題#錄像藝術

Related

Ben Quilty's NYC Debut "Devil/God": Turning Cars Into Phallic Idols, Stitching the Virgin Mary Into Corporal Punishment Leather
Art

Ben Quilty's NYC Debut "Devil/God": Turning Cars Into Phallic Idols, Stitching the Virgin Mary Into Corporal Punishment Leather

Australian painter Ben Quilty will present his solo exhibition "Devil/God" at albertz benda in New York, using thickly layered oil paintings and sculpture to confront masculine idolatry, religious power, and ecological collapse. The show opens October 15, 2026.

Freddie Mercury's Yamaha C3 Piano Heading to Auction, Estimated at $528,000
Art

Freddie Mercury's Yamaha C3 Piano Heading to Auction, Estimated at $528,000

The Yamaha grand piano that recorded "The Game" and "Hot Space" at Munich's Musicland Studios will go under the hammer at Propstore, alongside Mercury's studio microphone and handwritten manuscripts.

Kenny Schachter on the Art World's Mess: Stop Complaining, Go Make Something
Art

Kenny Schachter on the Art World's Mess: Stop Complaining, Go Make Something

In a Hypebeast "State of Art" interview, artist, critic, and curator Kenny Schachter uses his three-decade obsession with Paul Thek to make the case for his own signature advice: instead of griping about the art world, just get to work.

Justin Bieber Puts Out Call on X: Wants to Make a SKYLRK Phone
Art

Justin Bieber Puts Out Call on X: Wants to Make a SKYLRK Phone

Justin Bieber took to social media to publicly announce he wants to build a SKYLRK phone, leaving behind a dedicated email address to recruit potential collaborators. The idea surfaced the same week SKYLRK has been rolling out a flurry of footwear and audio products.

Yohei Ogawa Enters Trading Cards for the First Time, "Green Cow Garden" Pop-Up Lands at Hong Kong's BELOWGROUND
Art

Yohei Ogawa Enters Trading Cards for the First Time, "Green Cow Garden" Pop-Up Lands at Hong Kong's BELOWGROUND

Japanese illustrator Yohei Ogawa launches a debut trading card project with 137 designs at Hong Kong's BELOWGROUND, anchored by a 1.4-meter BG Bear statue on site. He also opened up about his own struggles trying to score Pokémon card packs.

Met Museum Displays Oldest Surviving Fragment of the Odyssey, Papyrus Reveals Three Lost Lines
Art

Met Museum Displays Oldest Surviving Fragment of the Odyssey, Papyrus Reveals Three Lost Lines

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put the oldest surviving Ptolemaic-era papyrus fragment of the Odyssey back on display in Gallery 162. Dating to roughly 285–250 BCE Egypt, the ancient artifact contains three lines of verse not found in today's standard text.