Kiki Smith
Courtesy Kiki Smith and Pace Gallery
Posner Helaine (ed.), Kiki Smith: Telling Tales, exh. cat., International Center of Photography, New York (29 March–10 June 2001), New York, International Center of Photography, 2001
→Weitman Wendy (ed.), Kiki Smith: Prints, Books & Things, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York (5 December 2003–8 March 2004), New York, Museum of Modern Art, 2003
Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980–2005, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2006 – 2007
→Kiki Smith, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1994
→Kiki Smith: Sojourn, Elizabeth A. Sackler Museum’s Center, Brooklyn, 12 February–12 September 2010
Kiki Smith's Portrait
Kiki Smith in conversation with Madeleine Grynsztejn
American sculptress and printmaker.
Kiki Smith, the daughter of actress and opera singer Jane Lawrence and Tony Smith, one of the most famous abstract modernist painters and sculptors of the post-war period, moved to New York in 1976, where she became acquainted with the rock and art scenes. She was a member of the Colab group (Collaborative Projects, Inc.), which fought against traditional means of disseminating art and its market. With the help of Jane Dickson, she created her first monotypes. In 1979, the young artist discovered and copied illustrations from the “Gray’s Anatomy” manual (1901). Her first objects were made of plaster, but she soon starting using various materials, thus humorously combining noble materials with forms usually relegated to the realm of the disgusting. The body, in its physical form, open body, dissected, abject, exuding fluids and substances, acting as a narrative vessel.
She cites the following as influences on her creative process: Louise Nevelson, Lee Bontecou, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Meredith Monk, and Nancy Spero in particular. In the 1990s, the location of objects in space became central to her work, which started resembling bona fide installations. She continues to subvert biblical and topical figures, usually feminine, belonging to art history (Untitled). Since the mid-1990s, her work has left the human body behind, reaching for the cosmos, through engravings or installations that combine the animal world and fairy tales, and evoke wonder or fear.
© Éditions des femmes – Antoinette Fouque, 2013
© Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, 2017
