Transgnosis
3D printed sculpture, 2021
Dana Smith is an artist based in Newcastle. Her work spans film, sculpture, and event curation, drawing on personal narrative to explore how hypervisibility, bodily surveillance, and transmisogyny shape working class trans feminine experience in public space.
She is currently developing a series of sculptures as part of her ongoing project Sliding Off the Edge of the Map.
Do You Suck C*ck Like a Good Girl?
Film and sculpture, 2021
Transgnosis
3D printed sculpture, 2021
Neon Life Drawing
Event, 2022
Neon Life Drawing
Event poster, 2024
Sliding Off the Edge of the Map
Radio transmitter, 2025
Metro
Film (prototype), 2021
Sliding Off the Edge of the Map
2025 – Ongoing
Sliding Off the Edge of the Map is an ongoing practice-based investigation into trans feminine experience of public infrastructure and the state. The project began with a radio experiment using a concealed transmitter to interrupt strangers' passive soundscapes, exploring the paradox of hypervisibility and assimilation by framing trans expression as discordant signal, an uninvited encounter received as noise. This investigation continues through a series of wooden sculptures based on street infrastructure such as pedestrian crossing buttons and signal control boxes. Rooted in the everyday experience of navigating Newcastle, the project asks how these small, tangible encounters with the state might serve as starting points for broader questions about trans presence in public space.
The Big Gay Fund
2023 – Ongoing
The Big Gay Fund is a mutual aid collective for trans and non-binary people in the North East, co-founded by Dana in 2023. The fund has raised over £30,000 to date, primarily supporting access to gender affirming surgeries alongside legal costs for queer refugees in Newcastle.
Neon
2022 – 2024
Neon was a queer alternative life drawing event that ran for eight sessions between 2022 and 2024. Centering trans and queer bodily autonomy, models were given complete control over pose, props, costume, and lighting, creating conditions for self-determined gender expression and resisting the fetishisation of trans bodies.
Do You Suck C*ck Like a Good Girl?
2021
Do You Suck C*ck Like a Good Girl? was Dana's final MA project at Northumbria University in 2021. The work comprised a series of computer generated films presenting expressionist recreations of trans women's experiences of sexual violence in public space, rendered from multiple perspectives. Accompanying the films was Transgnosis, a 3D printed sculpture examining trans feminine encounters with the masculine, procedural logic of virtual environments.
For inquiries about works, exhibitions, or commissions:
Based in Newcastle, UK