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“Both Mobutu and his works sit between cultures, artistic and aesthetic paradigms, and between visual and spoken languages.”
—Dr. Booker Stephen Carpenter II, Ceramics Art and Perception, Issue 30, 1997.
“‘I wanted to be able to do this stuff [graffiti]. It was huge. It was amazing—thick lines and forms and colors. It was always about this fine, crisp edge—that final tight ‘outline.’ Smith feels graffiti carries the same energy, the same magical understanding of forms and their relationships, and the same quality of exaggeration, as African sculpture, to which he feels a kinship.”
—Dr. Luoana M. Lackey, Ceramics Monthly, June/July/August 2004
“Malcolm Mobutu Smith’s references to ancient African art are quirky but graceful.”
—David Minton, art critic. Lexington Herald Leader, Oct. 1, 2000.
“This artistic dialogue, where one element of a pot is in counterpoint to another, is characteristic of Smith’s work. Piece after piece sets up opposing elements—high and low art, past and present, function and decoration, China and Africa, two dimensions and three—and brings them into relation with each other.”
—Leora Baude, Indiana University Research and Creative Activity, Volume XXVII No. 2 (Spring 2005)
“Touch and Circumstance: Recent Ceramic Work by Malcolm Mobutu Smith” by Laura O’Donnell (Critical Ceramics, November 2006)
“Ceramics as Hypertext and Curriculum: Malcolm Mobutu Smith’s Complex and Complicated Clay Conversations” by B. Stephen Carpenter II (terracotta magazine, January 2007)
