Ahlina Kay-Lynn Smart (b. 2003 Roseville, CA; based in Long Beach) is a black and native multidisciplinary artist whose practice moves fluidly between sculpture/installation, video, performance, and drawing. Smart received her B. A in Art with a minor in Digital Media from the University of California, Irvine in Spring 2025.
I approach artmaking as a way of exploring both personal and collective experiences, engaging with themes of memory, loss, perception, and belonging. My work is as much about asking questions as it is about finding answers, and allows me to process the emotions and histories that shape who I am. My sculptures and installations often decay or transform over time, tethering my practice to the cycles of impermanence I see mirrored in both the body and nature. In contrast, my video and digital work let me step outside that inevitability, giving me more agency in how time is constructed. This matters because it reflects the dual ways I understand experience: both as something bound to the body and matter, and as something that can be reimagined through perception. Across mediums, my practice is driven by a desire to disorient, push beyond expectation, and make the familiar feel strange. In this exchange of my imagined realities and a viewer’s perception. I hope to remind us of the ways we are bound to one another and the world we inhabit.
CV
EDUCATION
2025 B.A Art and Digital Media Minor, University of California Irvine
2021 High School Diploma, Cordova High School
EXHIBITIONS
2025 POWER GRAB. Venice, CA.
2025 Selected Passages. University of California, Irvine. Irvine, CA.
2025 20th Annual Guest Juried Undergraduate Exhibition. University of California, Irvine. Irvine, CA.
2025 IMPRINTS. University of California, Irvine. Irvine, CA.
2025 Unbound Gestures. University of California, Irvine. CA.
2024 19th Annual Guest Juried Undergraduate Exhibition. University of California, Irvine. Irvine, CA.
CURATORIALL PROJECTS
2025. IMPRINTS. University of California, Irvine. Irvine, CA.
2025 Liminal Threads. University of California, Irvine. Irvine, CA.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2025 Set Designer, Téodore MATA: Decoy SS26 Runway Show. Los Angeles, CA.
2025 Museum Art Educator, Jack & Shanaz Langson Institute & Museum of California Art. Irvine, CA.
2024 Gallery Guide, Jack & Shanaz Langson Institute & Museum of California Art. Irvine, CA.
2023 Counselor, Claire Trevor School of the Arts: Summer Academies. Irvine, CA.
Ahlina Kay-Lynn Smart 