When Shinique Smith moved into a new Los Angeles studio very last 12 months, she did not go for just a light-flooded room with towering ceilings and panoramic mountain views. As a substitute, she opted for a studio with all of the previously mentioned, and that also happens to be housed in the previous It Club, a famous jazz venue in which Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis generally performed in the 1960s. It is a extra than fitting environment for an artist who frequently explores Black history in her function. There, Smith dyes and bleaches material, paints canvases, bundles fabric into sculptures, and if not transforms materials with complicated histories—such…