“If Darryl Keith Babatunde Smith makes vulnerable figures with his ‘whispered lines’, it is because in the Hellenistic sculptures he loves, he saw the courage of the non-ideal, the human passions and flaws. ”

“Smith’s figures appear like ekphrasis leaping off the page, granting visual presence to the literary musings that described the relaxed musculature of sleep, to the crumpled form of embarrassment, to the fleshiness inherent to our human forms.”