Cody Smith is a visual artist based in Langley, BC. Holding a BFA from OCAD University and an MFA from Emily Carr University, Smith brings a deeply personal perspective to his practice. Before and alongside his academic training, he worked in the Canadian construction industry; an experience that continues to shape his artistic practice. Drawing directly from the built environment, he challenges traditional painting conventions by incorporating materials such as plywood, steel, and concrete into his work.

Within these materials, Smith searches for memory in what he calls

"traces". These take on many forms, from a faded factory stamp or fragment of handwriting, to the curved gesture of a discarded off-cut.

Rather than changing or concealing these traces, he elevates them, allowing them to remain visible as quiet testaments to the hands that shaped them. In doing so, his process becomes both an excavation and an act of reverence: a way of examining his own personal history while reflecting on the broader narrative of human labour and our relationship to materials. In an era defined by rapid technological advancement and artificial intelligence, this visibility feels more urgent than ever. As images, objects, and language are generated with frictionless precision, evidence of the human hand is fading away. The

"traces" he preserves are resisting an increasingly expressionless and inauthentic visual world.

Joe is an exhibition that honours Smith's late grandfather, Joseph Elliott, a blue-collar construction and factory worker whose life embodied steady, uncelebrated dedication. Yet the name "Joe" carries weight beyond the personal. It evokes the so-called "Average Joe," the worker who forms the backbone of our economic systems, yet is frequently overlooked and easily forgotten. In this body of work, joe becomes both one person and many: a tribute to working-class individuals whose labour shapes our world, even when their stories remain unseen.

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