Kiki Smith
Encyclopedia
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
for hidden social issues. Her work also often includes the themes of birth
Birth
Birth is the act or process of bearing or bringing forth offspring. The offspring is brought forth from the mother. The time of human birth is defined as the time at which the fetus comes out of the mother's womb into the world...
and regeneration, as well as sustenance, and frequently has Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
allusions. Smith has also been active in debate over controversies such as AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
, race, and battered women.
Career
Smith grew up in South Orange, New JerseySouth Orange, New Jersey
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 16,964 people, 5,522 households, and 3,766 families residing in the township. The population density was 5,945.3 people per square mile . There were 5,671 housing units at an average density of 1,987.5 per square mile...
and attended Columbia High School
Columbia High School (New Jersey)
Columbia High School is a four-year comprehensive regional public high school located at 17 Parker Avenue in Maplewood, New Jersey, which serves students in grades nine through twelve within the South Orange-Maplewood School District, which includes Maplewood and South Orange Townships...
.
Kiki Smith began sculpting in the late 1970s. She is best known for her sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
s; however, she creates pieces in a variety of media. She was an active member of the artists' group Colab
Colab
Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines. Colab came together as a collective in 1977, and initially received an NEA Workshop Grant through Center for...
.
Her father was the artist Tony Smith
Tony Smith (sculptor)
Tony Smith was an American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer, and a noted theorist on art. He is often cited as a pioneering figure in American Minimalist sculpture.-Education:...
and her mother the actress and opera singer Jane Lawrence
Jane Lawrence
Jane Lawrence Smith , born Jane Brotherton, was an American actress and opera singer who was part of the New York art scene from the 1950s on.-Life and work:...
Smith. They were both religious in some sense; her mother was a converted Hindu and Catholic, and her father was raised by Jesuits. Smith describes herself as spiritual, saying that, "the most important part of my life” has been spent “thinking about God or Gods”. There are underlying themes of devotion, religion, repetition, and/or spirituality in Smith's work, whether that be in reference to her own spirituality, or the spirituality of other cultures and their history. Smith has said that she was influenced by her experience as a learning disabled child in school, and that as a result it is important to her for her work to be accessible.
Since 1980, Smith has produced a myriad of works in media such as sculpture, prints, installations and others. These have been admired for having a highly developed, yet sometimes unsettling, sense of intimacy in their timely political and social provocations. These traits have brought her critical success.
Her print collection is particularly extensive and began in the 1980s. The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) has consistently collected her prints, and now owns over fifty of her print projects. Speaking of the quality of reproduction inherent to the medium, Smith has stated that "Prints mimic what we are as humans: we are all the same and yet every one is different. I think there's a spiritual power in repetition, a devotional quality, like saying rosaries." (1998)
In the Blue Prints series, 1999, Kiki Smith experimented with the aquatint process. The "Virgin with Dove" was achieved with aquatint and airbrushing with stop out, an acid resist that protects the copper plate and prevents the Prussian blue ink from adhering, therefore creating a halo around the Virgin and Holy Spirit.
Smith's first works were screenprints on dress
Dress
A dress is a garment consisting of a skirt with an attached bodice or with a matching bodice giving the effect of a one-piece garment.Dress may also refer to:*Clothing in general*Costume, fancy dress...
es, scarves
Scarf
A scarf is a piece of fabric worn around the neck, or near the head or around the waist for warmth, cleanliness, fashion or for religious reasons. They can come in a variety of different colours.-History:...
and shirt
Shirt
A shirt is a cloth garment for the upper body. Originally an undergarment worn exclusively by men, it has become, in American English, a catch-all term for almost any garment other than outerwear such as sweaters, coats, jackets, or undergarments such as bras, vests or base layers...
s, often with images of body parts. In association with artist group Colab
Colab
Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines. Colab came together as a collective in 1977, and initially received an NEA Workshop Grant through Center for...
, Smith printed an array of posters in the early 1980s containing political statements or announcing upcoming events. A sampling of her other works include: All Souls (1988), a screenprint on 36 attached sheets of handmade Thai
Thai art
Traditional Thai art is primarily composed of Buddhist art. Traditional Thai sculpture almost exclusively depicts images of the Buddha. Traditional Thai paintings usually consist of book illustrations, and painted ornamentation of buildings such as palaces and temples.-Painting:Traditional Thai...
paper with repetitive images of a fetus, in black and white. Smith created similar prints including Untitled (Baby's Heads), 1990 and Untitled (Negative Legs), 1991. How I Know I'm Here (1985) is a 16-foot, horizontal, four part linocut depicting internal organs including a heart
Heart
The heart is a myogenic muscular organ found in all animals with a circulatory system , that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions...
, lungs, and male and female reproductive organs, intermingled with etched lines representing her own feet, face
Face
The face is a central sense organ complex, for those animals that have one, normally on the ventral surface of the head, and can, depending on the definition in the human case, include the hair, forehead, eyebrow, eyelashes, eyes, nose, ears, cheeks, mouth, lips, philtrum, temple, teeth, skin, and...
, and hand
Hand
A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered extremity located at the end of an arm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs...
s. Possession Is Nine-Tenths of the Law (1985) is a nine part print portfolio that individualizes and calls attention to the body's internal organs. Smith used the image of a human ovum, surrounded on one side by protective cells, in Black Flag (1989), and Cause I'm On My Time (inserts for Fawbush Gallery Invitations ) (1990).
Mary Magdelene (1994), a sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
made of silicon bronze and forged steel, features a woman's nude body in an untraditional way: her whole body is flayed
Flaying
Flaying is the removal of skin from the body. Generally, an attempt is made to keep the removed portion of skin intact.-Scope:An animal may be flayed in preparation for human consumption, or for its hide or fur; this is more commonly called skinning....
, skin removed to show bare muscle tissue. However, her face, breasts and the area surrounding her navel remain smooth. She wears a chain around her ankle; her face is relatively undetailed and is turned upwards. Smith has said that when making Mary Magdalene she was inspired by depictions of Mary Magdalene in Southern German sculpture, where she was depicted as a "wild woman". Smith's sculpture Standing (1998), featuring a female figure standing atop the trunk of a dead Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia...
tree, is a part of the Stuart Collection
Stuart Collection
The Stuart Collection is a collection of public art on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. Founded in 1983, the Stuart Collection's goal is to spread commissioned sculpture throughout the campus, including both traditional sculptures and integration with features of the campus...
of public art on the campus of the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
. While studying anatomy Smith worked with cadavers. For her sculptures she casts both the living and the dead, and has expressed that she tries to be respectful of their bodies.
Smith has also created an extensive collection of self-portrait
Self-portrait
A self-portrait is a representation of an artist, drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by the artist. Although self-portraits have been made by artists since the earliest times, it is not until the Early Renaissance in the mid 15th century that artists can be frequently identified depicting...
s, nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
-themed works, and many pieces that depict scenes from fairy tales, often in unconventional ways.
Smith feels that she makes traditional objects. Of figurative sculpture she has said, “they have real power in them, they take up some kind of psychic space,” and that, “I think that objects have memories. I’m always thinking that I’ll go to the museum and see something and have a big memory about some other lifetime.”
She has created unique books, including:
Fountainhead (1991); The Vitreous Body (2001); and Untitled (Book of Hours
Book of Hours
The book of hours was a devotional book popular in the later Middle Ages. It is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like every manuscript, each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, but most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and...
) (1986). Smith collaborated with poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge is a contemporary poet. Winner of two American Book Awards, her work is often associated with the Language School, the poetry of the New York School, phenomenology, and visual art...
to produce Endocrinology (1997), and Concordance (2006), and with author Lynne Tillman
Lynne Tillman
Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. She is currently Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at the University at Albany and is the author of five novels, three collections of short stories, one collection of essays, and two other nonfiction...
to create Madame and Realism (1984).
In 2009, Smith was awarded the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
Women In The Arts Award.
Kiki Smith has been represented by The Pace Gallery
Pace Gallery
The Pace Gallery is a New York City-based exhibition space. It was founded in 1960 in Boston by Arne Glimcher.-PaceWildenstein:From 1993 until April 1, 2010, the gallery became "PaceWildenstein," a joint business venture between the Pace Gallery and Wildenstein & Co....
since 1994.
External links
- The Pace Gallery
- http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/smith/Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips from PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
series Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century (2003)] - Interview with Kiki Smith
- Museum of Biblical Art - Biblical Art in a Secular Century: Selections, 1896-1993 featuring Kiki Smith Processional Crucifix from Saint Peter's Church, New York, NY
- 'Kiki Smith video interview'
- Museum of Modern Art Kiki Smith exhibition
- http://ubu.wfmu.org/video/Smith-Kiki_Jewel-Excerpt_1997.aviJewel An excerpt of Smith's 1997 film in the AVIAudio Video InterleaveAudio Video Interleave , known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback...
format] - Heyoka magazine Interview with John LekayJohn LeKayJohn LeKay is an English conceptual and installation artist and sculptor, who lives in New York. In 1993, he began to make skulls covered in crystal: he has accused Damien Hirst of copying this and other ideas. He publishes the web site, heyokamagazine.-Life and work:John LeKay was born in London...
- Kiki Smith: "Life Wants to Live" (1:33) published at Tellus Audio Cassette MagazineTellus Audio Cassette MagazineLaunched from the Lower East Side, Manhattan, in 1983 as a subscription only bimonthly publication, the Tellus cassette series took full advantage of the popular cassette medium to promote cutting-edge downtown music, documenting the New York scene and advancing experimental composers of the time...
- Kiki Smith at sculpture.org.uk