Foreign Body examines the ways in which the body can become estranged from itself through lived experience. The work considers how hormonal change, medical intervention, and external regulation alter one’s sense of physical and emotional continuity, producing a tension between embodiment and identity.

The sculpture emerged from Smith’s earlier work Breeze (2019), which she scanned using a vintage device. Rather than producing an accurate reproduction, the scan distorted the form, generating a digital figure that Smith titled Creation of the Virtual Venus. This misreading became a point of departure, exposing how technology reframes and mediates the body.

By looping the digital form in rotation and re-sculpting it as a miniature clay maquette, Smith translated distortion back into physical matter. Through this process, Foreign Body holds the body in a state of transformation, reflecting the instability that emerges when biological experience, technology, and perception intersect.

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Each of Smith’s sculptures is accompanied by an editioned print that functions as its “DNA blueprint”, generated through the artist’s sculpting and scanning process. Printed as a fine art Giclée on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, one of the most archival papers available, the print operates both as documentation and as an independent artwork, preserving the sculpture’s essence in two-dimensional form.

For Smith, the print is an essential extension of the sculpture. Through digital processing, the form moves between dimensions, existing as both physical presence and flattened image. This pairing reflects her ongoing inquiry into how identity now operates across physical and digital realms, where presence is increasingly distributed, and a digital counterpart has become integral to how objects and individuals are seen and understood.

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