Dr. Alexia Smit is a highly innovative South African painter, media scholar, and educator whose unique practice operates at the intersection of critical television studies and contemporary visual arts. Holding a PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of Glasgow, Smit integrates fine art painting directly with rigorous cultural theory. Her research-heavy studio practice treats paint not merely as a creative medium, but as an active analytical tool to investigate, deconstruct, and challenge how the complex social geography of Cape Town is historically represented on South African television screens.

By reinterpreting and re-authoring specific scenes from local broadcast dramas, her canvases strip away commercial veneers to reveal deeply rooted spatial and social inequalities. This methodology is brilliantly showcased in her celebrated painting series inspired by the neo-noir local drama Skemerdans.

Rejecting the glossy, tourism-driven, and wealth-centered images of the Mother City often broadcast to global audiences, Smit's moody, atmospheric compositions portray a gritty, familiar, and authentic working-class cityscape. Currently serving as a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT), she actively extends her research beyond traditional text. Smit frequently collaborates with academic colleagues and local artists to produce illustrated zines and public archives on South African visual culture, democratising art theory and making critical media literacy accessible to wider communities.