If you noticed Atlanta Season 3’s stunning artwork, Alim Smith is the man behind it. The Delaware artist re-envisioned the show’s main characters as abstract-inspired paintings. In the paintings, he accurately captured Darius (LaKeith Stanfield) as pensive and hard to read, Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry) as grouchy and standoffish, Van’s (Zazie Beetz) aloofness, and Earn’s (Donald Glover) skepticism. Smith’s art is now featured on the show’s posters, which are displayed all over the country on billboards, bus stops, and subway stations. The interdisciplinary artist’s work is heavily inspired by Black culture. His painting of the iconic The Wire Wee-Bey GIF caught the attention of someone in the FX promo department, who reached out to Smith ahead of the series’ highly-anticipated return.
“He said he found it on Twitter. He said he found a Wee-Bey meme and he just felt like he had to reach out to me, which was crazy,” Smith tells Complex. Smith says the collaboration with FX didn’t feel real until Atlanta’s creator Donald Glover talked about him on Jimmy Kimmel Live! That’s when he felt he’d really made it. “I thought, these are so cool. They’re beautiful,” Glover said about the posters. “I love his work. I like the fact that these are around town and you can see them and it feels like art.”
Smith attended Cab Calloway School of the Arts in Wilmington, DE, where he learned to be competitive in order to be recognized. When he realized memes were getting him the most traction online, he started producing afro-surrealism art focusing on prominent pop culture figures and iconic memes. For its Black History Month event In Living Color, Instagram recently asked him to produce 25 oil on canvas paintings depicting the most viral and recognizable Black memes, like the Will Smith “pain” meme, the crying Michael Jordan meme, and the Viola Davis grabbing her purse and leaving meme. “To see people, celebrities and people who aren’t celebrities, acknowledging me as an artist, makes me feel like I’ve arrived,” Smith tells Complex, who previously did illustrations for our 2018 Best Rappers in Their 20s list. We caught up with Smith and learned how he went from Instagram meme creator to becoming the lead artist on FX’s Atlanta.
Even Kimmel said artists don’t get the credit and the props they deserve. How was it to get that recognition as an artist?
In my mind, I could not feel like an artist. It is a weird feeling. I felt the same when I was 6 years old, drawing little pictures, just trying to figure it out. Still, even though I am definitely an artist, definitely considered an artist, definitely make art, I don’t always feel like I’ve arrived, like I’ve done it yet because you always have a million more ideas. So the recognition is absolutely insane.
You still don’t feel like you can call yourself an artist?
I can. There’s a part of my ego obviously that’s like, “Yeah I’m an artist and I do dope shit, and I’m dope.” I know how to arrange colors and I can paint whatever is put in front of me. Tell me the idea. I can interpret whatever. I’m amazing. But then there’s also a part of me that’s critiquing everything. Even while working on Atlanta, I had to do over 300 edits just to start painting.
I can obviously do the work, I’ve been trained to do the work, but that whole time I’m like, “Oh my God, what if I ruin Atlanta? What if?” I feel like an artist but I critique myself a lot. I feel like every artist critiques themselves to the point where they’re just like, “No, I didn’t do it yet. I didn’t do the thing that’s going to make everybody shit their pants.”
Every single Atlanta poster captures the essence of each of the characters. Obviously, you being a fan of the show helps with that, but how were you able to capture that in your art?
Well, as soon as they hit me up I was thinking it was BS. I’m going to circle back. Do you remember when Jussie Smollett initially got into a bunch of trouble? I was hit up to work on some promo art for the show Empire and he got in trouble around the same time. So they just completely canceled the project. Ever since then, I was just like, “Man, I don’t even know what’s going to happen with any of these projects, let me not get too hyped. Let me just settle down.”
When they told me about Atlanta, I watched the first two seasons over again. I literally came up with, besides having to do 300 edits rigorously, a million sketches over and over again, which I hate that I can’t share. I drew a lot of my own sketches just based on different ways that I thought they could be interpreted. I really studied that show to the best of my ability. On top of having the promo team being very rigorous with how even if the eye was off a little bit, if there was a smile that was off a little bit, there was an edit. There was a new edit for everything. These were made way before I painted them. So painting them was almost the easy part, the real part was trying to capture them. And that was months of edits. It was ridiculous.
But it paid off, for sure.
Yes, it helped me figure out my process and how I need to go about making art from now on.
Social media and Instagram are such huge tools for creatives. How do you feel about it and how it has impacted your life?
Oh man, I am deeply appreciative of social media because when I was growing up, it wasn’t really an idea that you could be a successful artist. I feel like that was way more far out than even being a successful musician. Not many people can name five Black artists. Because of social media and how much visual content matters nowadays, it’s completely changed my life. At least my art life for the better, and just connecting with many Black creatives. The only downside is, just trying not to stay on social media and making sure you make stuff for social media. Make sure that you’re not spending all your day scrolling. That you’re actually using your hands to make artwork, using it as a tool.
I love that you have been able to create art that’s inspired by memes and pop culture. Why did you decide to go that route?
So how I approach making artwork for shows and just for social media, I will always just be in competition with what’s grabbing the most attention. I started painting memes because I was scrolling one day after I had a conversation with one of my friends who works at a museum, who was telling me, “You have a great piece if it can make someone stare for 60 to 90 seconds.” I never even thought about that.
This is a war for the eyes. I just kept seeing these memes going stupid viral. Memes were shared more than anything. I didn’t see any artists being compared to memes. I didn’t see any artists that were making artwork that was getting shared like a meme. And that was where it all started.
A lot of people don’t give credit to Black Twitter and Black creators on TikTok. Do you hope that through your art and as an artist, you can help celebrate people that often get overlooked?
I definitely hope that my art does that and I definitely want to make sure that I celebrate all of the things in Black culture that are obscure and weird and different. I want to make sure I celebrate all of the things, not the normal popular things that are going on in Black culture, but the subculture of Blackness, I want to make sure I celebrate it always.
What do you think Atlanta represents as a TV show, in pop culture and Black art overall?
Even though it’s really crazy and it’s weird, I feel like it really represents the truth. I feel like it represents the multidimensional nature of Blackness and how many different ways it can exist. I feel like, for so long in films and TV shows, Black people have been a caricature of Blackness until recently with something Issa Rae’s shows and Donald Glover. So I feel like it just represents the truth, which I really appreciate.
This is the kind of show that we’ll talk about 20 years from now. And your art is going to be forever attached to season three. What is that like for you?
Like I’m an artist. Like I did it. I’m going to feel real good. We’re in a very special, rare time where we can document so many people who never would’ve been documented.
For any younger artists who are maybe feeling like there is no space for them in the art world, what would you say to them?
I would say to them to get more creative because art is infinite. There’s infinite space for art. If you are an artist that feels like there’s no space for you in the art world, you’re thinking too small as an artist. There’s more than enough space for you. There’s infinite space. Creativity has no limits or bounds.
