Kiki Smith was born in
1954 in Nuremberg, Germany. The daughter of American sculptor Tony
Smith, Kiki Smith grew up in New Jersey. As a young girl, one of
Smith’s first experiences with art was helping her father make
cardboard models for his geometric sculptures. This training in
formalist
systems, combined with her upbringing in the Catholic Church, would
later resurface in Smith’s evocative sculptures, drawings,
and prints. The recurrent subject matter in Smith’s work has
been the body as a receptacle for knowledge, belief, and storytelling.
In the 1980s, Smith literally turned the figurative tradition in
sculpture inside out, creating objects and drawings based on organs,
cellular forms, and the human nervous system. This body of work
evolved to incorporate animals, domestic objects, and
narrative
tropes from classical
mythology
and folk tales. Life, death, and resurrection are thematic signposts
in many of Smith’s
installations
and sculptures. In several of her recent pieces, including “Lying
with the Wolf,” “Wearing the Skin,” and “Rapture,” Smith takes as her inspiration the life of St. Genevieve, the patron
saint of Paris. Portrayed communing with a wolf, taking shelter
with its pelt, and being born from its womb, Smith’s character
of Genevieve embodies the complex,
symbolic relationships between
humans and animals. Smith received the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture in 2000, the Athena Award for Excellence in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005, the 50th Edward MacDowell Medal from the MacDowell Colony in 2009, and has participated in the Whitney Biennial three times in the past decade. In 2005, Smith was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York. Smith's work is in numerous prominent museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Smith lives and works in New York City.
For additional biographic & bibliographic information:
PaceWildenstein, New York | Barbara Gross Galerie, Munich
Kiki Smith on the Art21 blog |
