Once The Smoke Clears Installation

Once The Smoke Clears (2022)

For her first exhibition in a major U.S. museum, Glow delves into the unseen and unsavory sociohistorical and ecological realities underlying the tobacco industry’s veneer of luxury through her digitally printed and embroidered silk textiles, VR-sculpted and 3D-printed objects, watercolors, and scent experiences. In exploring the global uses of tobacco, Glow questions the embedded histories of visual culture by critiquing unresolved injustices wrought by colonial desires to profit from the lucrative tobacco trade. The artist weaves together tantalizingly decadent surfaces with imagery derived from historical sources, and examines the networks through which tobacco spread across the world. While the works initially appear as a celebration of opulence, closer inspection reveals the cascading impacts of colonialism, capitalism, and inequitable trade networks.

Curated by Sarah Cho, Curatorial Assistant of American Painting & Sculpture and Decorative Arts, and Virginia Anderson, Curator of American Art. Photography by Mitro Hood.

Public Programs:

Aromatic Realities Workshop, June 5, 2022
Exhibition walk-through and conversation with Beatrice Glow, organized by John Hopkins University Center for Visual Arts, September 15, 2022

Photography by Mitro Hood

“Glow creates a multimedia microhistory exploring the role of tobacco in 18th-century Maryland. Drawing upon her studies as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, Glow pored through the archives to uncover early histories and illustrations related to tobacco as a globally traded, luxury commodity. The sweet aroma of tobacco is a perfume of power and corruption. Wafting through this hyperlocal history are the stenches of slavery, colonization, and exploitation of natural resources.”

— Colleen Kennedy

“Brooklyn-based artist Beatrice Glow’s solo exhibition, Once the Smoke Clears, at the Baltimore Museum of Art is a riveting, multi-sensory collection of works exploring the social history of tobacco. An overall somber and contemplative atmosphere hangs over the exhibition with its dark gray walls, and a faintly smokey smell that can be sensed as one passes through the space. Glow is a multidisciplinary artist whose work ranges from watercolor, to VR-sculpted and 3D-printed objects, to printed and embroidered fabrics, and she grounds the research for this exhibition on Maryland’s history within the network of the global tobacco trade. She employs the language of decadence to uncover the true cost of luxury items and the ramifications of the forgotten history of the tobacco plant. Alluring in their intricate details, vivid colors, and natural imagery, the work in this exhibition is deceptive on closer inspection, as human suffering becomes visible.”